Queer

Luca Guadagnino has been taking his films in all sorts of directions lately, from cannibals-on-the-road to tennis player love triangles, it is now time for… absolutely the most interesting and unique film Guadagnino has made yet. Adapted from notoriously surreal and bonkers author William S. Burroughs, Queer stars Daniel Craig as a lonely and restless gay man in Mexico City, whose life consists of baffling social interactions and unfulfilling sexual encounters — not quite the idyllic summer nights of Call Me By Your Name. Eventually our lead finds someone to get attached to, Drew Starkey’s Allerton, and they begin a transactional relationship and venture down into South America. From there the film really becomes something to behold, a surrealist odyssey of tangled bodies, repressed desires, and psychedelics. Guadagnino had the fun job of completing a film based off a book which was never finished, just suddenly ending mid-paragraph, and I think he does a perfect job of capturing the elusive nature of the book whilst making Queer his own. Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig getting together might draw you in, but the psychological journey into madness will make Queer doubly worth your while. It couldn’t be more different from Challengers and yet Queer is just as gripping. Luca Guadagnino might be carrying cinema right now.

Daniel Kallin