Venice 2024 review: Two takes on Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’

One of our favourite films of this year’s Venice Film Festival is a lot to take in… What else would you expect from a William S. Burroughs adaptation? We focus on how director Luca Guadagnino brings repressed desire to life and his use of music to enhance the themes in ‘Queer’.

Based on the work of the great iconoclast of the beat generation William S. Burroughs, Queer is a lot to take in, as Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria, Bones And All, Challengers) has made one of his most tantalizingly oblique films to date.
Set in 1950, we meet William Lee (Daniel Craig), an American expat in Mexico City. He spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts in bars with other members of the small community. When he encounters the young Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), Lee dares to believe that it might be finally possible for him to establish an intimate connection with somebody.
We loved the film, and it stands as one of the most daring and distinctive films of the Competition this year. There’s so much to unpack that we’ll hold our hands up and admit we’re enjoying taking the time to sit with the film, whilst hoping that it doesn’t leave the Lido empty-handed. We have decided to focus on specific elements that worked for us, and which make Queer yet another standout in Guadagnino’s eclectic filmography.
Nobody depicts desire like Luca Guadagnino. Not only desire, but all the unspoken what-ifs that hang in the air between ourselves and the world around us; how we might choose to contain ourselves while desperately yearning for more. 
In Queer, these are translated through a mesmerising collage of visual feasts that move from the slow and sizzling – long shots of Lee (Daniel Craig) smoking in a neon-drizzled hotel room to the swell of music – to the spectacularly surreal (more on that below). 
It’s a bold departure from Burroughs’ original text, but one that pays off powerfully, as Guadagnino chooses instead to craft an audacious fever dream of dizzying symbolism that captures the internal workings of a complicated man in search of himself – and, in turn, the human condition. 
Some of the most striking visuals are those that play on the film’s themes of disembodiment: a spinning limbless woman appearing in red hues, and Burroughs sitting beside Gene Allerton (Drew Starkey) in the cinema as a ghost of his body detaches to lean over and hold his would-be lover.
While the first half is more concerned with establishing Burroughs’ day-to-day life of cruising bars in his crumpled white suit and a haze of cigarette smoke, the mood quickly escalates into greater abstraction in the second half, chaptered ‘Traveling Companions’, during which the pair visit south America in hopes of trying the hallucinogen Yage (also known as Ayahuasca). 
In a particularly striking drug-induced scene, Lee and Allerton’s bodies start to merge, reaching their hands through one another like putty in a moment of pure, unrestrained exploration of self-identity and connection. In the same way, Queer gets under viewers’ skins by immersing us in a purgatorial space that’s occupied by the lonely, and crawling with tactility – like the centipede imagery we see throughout. 
To steal a quote about the drug Yage from botanist Alice Cochran’s (Lesley Manville), who Lee and Allerton are staying with temporarily (alongside a sloth), Queer is “not a portal to another place, it is a mirror holding on to love, on to experience.”
And what an experience it is. AB
So much worked for me in Queer – from Daniel Craig’s performance to the inclusion of a clip at one point of Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphée which, alongside mirror imagery, foreshadows a reflection on the Orphean myth and feeds the theme of looking back to the past. And in doing so, one risks losing it all.
One thing that struck me in particular was the anachronistic placement of certain songs. The film wastes no time in dropping the first of two Nirvana songs, ‘All Apologies’, followed by ‘Come As You Are’.
Fittingly, these are two of the band’s queerest songs. The first is a cover by the late Sinéad O’Connor. The lyrics “What else should I be? / All apologies / What else could I say? / Everyone is gay” speak for themselves, while the following lines “What else could I write? / I don’t have the right” are perfect for the dissolute writer who is an avatar for beat poet William S. Burroughs. An obvious inclusion, maybe, but there’s great beauty in simplicity.
Then there’s ‘Come As You Are’ – with the inbuilt double-entendre considering the explicit sex scenes in Queer, as well as the film being centred around what it is to understand oneself. It plays over Daniel Craig’s Lee walking in a Mexican street in his crinkled cream suit, which is a terrific shot. The song has never sounded cooler or more sensual. He’s on the prowl and as he pauses to watch a cock fight (again, no props for guessing the subtext here), he clocks Gene (Drew Starkey – who doesn’t get all that much to do in the film apart from be eye candy). This happens over the lyric “I swear that I don’t have a gun,” which works as Lee carries a pistol on him at all times. This song joins the Orpheus theme with the repeated “Memoria” sung by Kurt Cobain, and highlights the fact that while Lee is awkward at times and past his prime, he is sure of what he wants. Or more accurately, who he wants. Gene, on the other hand, cultivates ambiguous emotions, intentions and identity.
Both these songs work as they reflect the film’s themes, as well as tease a vulnerable nature to Craig’s character – something which is explored in the final (and best) chapter of Queer. They also speak to me, as I not only love Nirvana, but am always delighted in being reminded that Cobain and his band were known for their support for the queer community. For instance, in the liner notes to 1992’s ‘Incesticide’, he wrote: “If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us – leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” Couldn’t be clearer. Cobain was publicly proud that Nirvana had played at a gay rights benefit concert that was held to oppose Oregon’s 1992 Ballot Measure 9, which would have directed Oregon schools to teach that homosexuality was “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.” At the time, few rock bands dared to speak out without fearing fan alienation or damaging a certain rock image through loud and proud advocacy.
Nirvana were ahead of their time. And I’d argue that so is Guadagnino. And if that bold statement seems a bit much, I’d temper it by saying he has yet to make a film I didn’t love. No other director could have done justice to Burroughs’ novella quite like the Italian maestro. And once again with Queer, he confirms he is a master when it comes to needle drops. From Call Me By Your Name’s ‘Visions of Gideon’ by Sufjan Stevens or the cover of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Emotional Rescue’ by St Vincent in A Bigger Splash, the filmmaker understands that a perfectly timed song can not only reflect and enhance the characters’ emotional developments, but also bolster the drama and its subtexts.
In Queer, whether it’s Prince, New Order or Nirvana, it’s a sonic tour de force. DM
Queerpremiered at the 81st Venice Film Festival in Competition.