“Queer” (2024) - Luca Guadagnino finds the soft machine at the heart of Burroughs’ novel

Guadagnino’s second masterpiece of the year is this Burroughs adaptation I didn’t know I needed. In some ways, it surpasses the novel in its humanity and Daniel Craig’s turn as William Lee, the never-ending on-thr-prowl “queer” of the title. Craig imbues Lee with immense humanity and just when you think he’s easy to write off as just a walking id, he surprises with genuine love and passion for the object of his desire, Gene (Drew Starkey, also compelling but more of an enigma). 

The novel is, by Burroughs’ standards, relatively grounded. To be clear, the Lee of the novel is based on Burroughs himself, but even in the book, there is a distance and reminders that he is not Burroughs. The book is autobiographical in some degrees, but Burroughs would likely be the first to point out the Lee is an unreliable narrator. By the time we get to Luca Guadagnino and Justin Kuritzkes’ script, he is more removed from the Burroughs we know, and in Craig’s hands becomes more fully recognizable as a fleshed out human being. He’s not all junk sick, priapism and absent the more intentionally abrasive aspect of Lee/Burroughs’ personality, is actually a little more fun, if that’s the word, to hang out with. 

There is a lush romantic vibe to the film that closes the gaps I sometimes feel in Guadagnino’s work. He’s a genius, for sure, but there’s a slight tendency to hold characters at a distance, which is usually employed to good effect. I’m not saying how he handles characters is bad, it’s just that here, we have a greater degree of interiority and a more immediate sense of Lee as a person. 

William Lee is a man of independent means and there’s not much of a back-story to why he’s embedded with the gay ex-pat community in 1950s Mexico City, where he’s in exile because homosexuality is a crime in the States; this is the movie’s version In fact, Burroughs skipped out on a drug and weapons charge and waited out the statute of limitations in Latin America. In any case, Bill’s a fixture and we glean pretty early on, not exactly fulfilled by his circumstances. As becomes clear throughout, he’s beset by his addictions. There’s sex, drinking, and drugs. And soon enough, there is Gene Allerton.

Bill is erudite, well-read, but exists in a dream state. I wouldn’t go so far to call it a fog. He is, in this way, much like the Lee in Burroughs’ novels; tuned in to some wavelength on the very edge of consciousness. 

As for Gene, he’s very much a cypher initially. Enigmatic, an intelligence analyst or a field agent. His means seem limited and he is often seen in the dive bars playing chess with Mary. Are they a couple? They seem to be, but he doesn’t necessarily avoid Bill, who most people very likely would.

Bill asks around about Gene; what’s his story? Is he gay or straight? What gives? Even after Bill and Gene have sex, the idea of their being a couple seems tenuous, at best. Gene is hesitant to go with Bill to South America in search of yage (ahyuhasca) because he treasures his independence. Conversely, Bill assures Gene that he can feel free to leave anytime, All Bill wants is for Gene to “be nice to him” twice a wee.

Dope sick and possessed by this idea to find yage, Lee gets s prescription for opium tincture, visits a botanist who tells him that there’s a botanist in the jungle who knows about yage, and it’s not long before we’re in the jungle with Lee and Gene slicing their way into the bush. By the time they make it to Cotter’s pilapa, the movie departs from the book substantially, but remains truer to Lee’s yearning and pain in the book. And perhaps, even truer to Burroughs, the man. 

Cotter is now a woman, Lesley Manville in a remarkable cameo, who - while guarding her research with a gun and being close to the Cotter of the book - is willing to grant Lee and Gene Lee’s request to experience yage. It’s a remarkable sequence as we see both Gene and Bill grow transparent and words from the novel in another context are spoke by both; Gene, growing increasingly transparent, telepathically tells Lee, “I’m not queer.” Lee, off-camera, replies that he knows, “I’m disembodied.”

What follows is a sequence in which their bodies melt into one another, becoming for all intents and purposes, one. But not wholly; in some ways, as liquid as the film renders their passing through one another, I thought more of Rodin’s couples, their intertwining and unity - not just in the composition but in the way bodies emerge from marble, as though from the primal stuff we all arise from and will return to. 

The trip sequence kicks off with a little body horror as both men cough up their hearts onto the jungle floor, but this is where one wonders; has Lee found what he what he was looking for? Did he find something like a genuine connection with his laconic lover? We might assume something of the sort. 

As they are packing the next day, Cotter tries to persuade them to stay; they’ve only opened the door. Don’t they want to explore further and learn the secrets of yage, learn about themselves more fully? Nope, looks like both boys have had enough. As they trundle throughout the jungle, Gene pushes ahead and doesn’t respond when Lee calls his name. Bill looks up to see Gene taking a swig of water and vanish. 

Cut to Bill landing on his feet on a beach and once back in Mexico City, the book aligns its epilog with the book, until it takes a Kubrickian turn that I think Burroughs would approve of. It’s both poetic but somehow fitting. Before that, though, we see Burroughs rising from a nap to see a replica of the hotel he visited with a boy earlier in the film. He gazes into a window and we cut to to him walking along the hallway to the same room. He enters, and there, on the bed, is Gene. Gene places a shot of whiskey on his head. Bill draws his pistol and misses, following the well-known story of how he killed his wife. 

He leans over Gene’s body, distraught but the body vanishes and the room is empty. Bill is alone. And then we see him as an old man. Craig resembles Burroughs very closely here. And he lies down and dies. 

I found this extremely poignant. Burroughs lived a long life that was more like dozens of lives rolled into one. He stashed “Queer” away for a coupe of reasons. It wasn’t quite up there with “Junky” in quality, perhaps. It is slighter; but I can’t help but feel that it was also a more emotionally exposed and exposing book than Burroughs was comfortable with .

“Queer”, the novel, was “motivated and formed by an event which is never mentioned, in fact, is carefully avoided, the accidental shooting death of my wife, Joan, in September 1951.” This is from Burroughs’ introduction to the book in 1985. This is something that transforms both the book upon re-reading it. Because of the direct reference to Joan’s death in the film, Guadagnino lends the film another, almost meta-textual dimension. If in the book, after reading Burroughs’ intro, we start to sense that the story is about lack, about death, and most of all, about one specific death that I’m not sure Burroughs ever came to terms worth, really, then the film elides the specifics, but is still informed by that same sense of absence, of yearning, and if not death, because Guadagnino’s text reads as more lush, more romantic - then certainly,  a kind nostalgia for what might have been and never was.

I want to gush about this film ridiculously, to the point where I might be overselling it. Craig’s performance is genuinely great. He becomes this William Lee; he’s always been a fine actor, and his bonafides aren’t in question, though he’s often turned in work in pieces that frankly, didn’t deserve it, but revisit his supporting act in Road to Perdition, his work in Munich, Layer Cake, in Logan Lucky, for that matter. And don’t forget, this is the guy who played Joe in the London premiere of Angels in America. What I’m getting at is that it’s time to see him in a role where the material demands and rewards the performance. 

Drew Starkey brings it, as well, but hss the cards stacked against him. It’s hard to flesh out a character so inscrutable; Gene is a cypher, he doesn’t give of himself much more here than in the novel. Indeed, in the book, he comes across as less guarded and more selfish. Here, he seems more protective of his space and his person, and given Craig’s Lee, that’s understandable. Jason Schwartzman is on hand in a great role as the diminutive (and pudgy! He’s almost unrecognizable as the Schwartzman we know) Joe Guidry, a barfly writer, and fellow ex-pat in the same demimonde as the rest of the crowd here. Joe is hilarious and straightforward and no less full of yearning than anyone else. And so on. 

The Mexico City we see is a painstaking reconstructed version of the real deal from over seventy hears ago built on the lots at Cinecitta. It is glorious in its artifice, which only adds to the romanticism of the film. That, and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has worked with Gugadagnino before (Challengers, Suspiria, Call Me By Your Name) and is also well-regarded for his work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (please see Memoria, if you haven’t and of course, Uncle Boonmee…, both of which are recalled in the jungle sequences here.) 

There’s also the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose that ranks among the best work they’ve done. Here, we find anachronistic but spot-on uses of Nirvana’s "Come as You Are" and New Order’s “Leave Me Alone” among others. This kind of thing often comes off ham-handed, hokey, or clumsy at best; here, we’re dealing with a story very much rooted in almost avant-garde sensibilities (Burroughs, in many ways, was the ultimate outsider, and it took decades for the rest of the world to catch up to him).