Starring: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville
Distributor: Madman films
Runtime: 137 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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In 1950s Mexico City, an American immigrant in his late 40s leads a solitary life amid a small American community. However, the arrival of a young student stirs the man into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
There will be many reasons why audiences would be interested in seeing Queer. Its Italian director Guadagnino became internationally famous with Call Me by Your Name and 2024’s tennis drama, Challengers. And the central character is the alter ego of American novelist, William S Burroughs.
There is also the meaning of the title, which is the title of a short novel written by Burroughs during his time in the early 1950s in Mexico but not published until the 1980s, his exploration of the meaning of ‘queer’ and his observations as a writer as well as his own personal involvements.
Audiences will appreciate and understand the film better if they have some previous knowledge of Burroughs. This film presupposes that audiences are aware of him, of his personality, of his career. A look at the Wikipedia entry on Burroughs offers more information than we can absorb, an interesting reminder that Burroughs had a long life, wrote many stories and articles, a number of novels, was friendly with Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac from early years, influential in the literature of the Beat Generation, also interested in visual art and making appearances in the number of films including Drugstore Cowboy, as well as David Cronenberg making a film of his controversial novel, The Naked Lunch.
With this background, we can understand Burroughs and his time in Mexico, seeing his typewriter with a page in it but not seeing him doing much writing, his drinking in bars, incessantly smoking, the conversations with gay friends, then creating an encounter with a young American, Eugene Allerton, Gene (Starkey). Allerton, like Burroughs, is a complex character, seeking, searching, testing relationships.
While the first part of the film is the exploration of the queer theme, the second part moves on to something different, something noted in the Wikipedia about Burroughs, his interest in magic, as well as in a South American plant which he thinks has the power to increase human telepathy. So Burroughs and Gene travel to the jungle, advised that there is a British doctor who has explored and experimented. She is played by Lesley Manville, almost unrecognisable, who leads them, tantalises them, in their experimentations with this plant.
Suddenly there is an epilogue, two years later, Burroughs himself cleaned up, on his way back to the US – but, many who are familiar with Burroughs’ life will remember that there was an episode with his wife, drinks, drugs, playing a game with a gun, to shoot an apple placed on her head, her death. And this is re-enacted at the end of the film with Gene and the apple.
Burroughs’ writing was stylised, exploratory – and Guadagnino’s film strives to illustrate this.
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