Challengers director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes bring the novel by William S. Burroughs about post-war gay men living in Mexico to the screen in an unusual fashion…
“I’m not queer. I’m disembodied.”
Earlier this year, director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) took a screenplay by playwright Justin Kuritzkes and hit it out of the tennis court with the moving and salacious Challengers. The filmmaking duo presented a story to the world of competitiveness, love triangles, and the idea of winning no matter the cost. It became one of the most talked about movies of the first half of 2024, largely due to the provocative nature that the three main characters find themselves in over the course of a decade of friendship and situationships.
It isn’t a likely scenario that a director and writer premiere two controversial films in the same year, but Guadagnino and Kuritzkes did just that this week when they debuted their newest movie, Queer, to audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival. Based on the emotive novel by William S. Burroughs, the film stars actor Daniel Craig as an American expat named William Lee living in post-war Mexico as he strives for the finer things in life: sex with men and heroin.
The film opens with Lee bouncing from bar to restaurant to bar in a matter of minutes as he attempts to meet men of a certain age to take back to a motel for a one-night stand. Drinking endless amounts of tequila in a 1940s setting, the American is successful with some prostitutes and those who haven’t met him yet. However, for those who have met him, including his equally obsessive friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman), Lee isn’t their cup of tea when it comes to bedroom antics.
That is until Lee meets the dashingly nerdy Eugene (Drew Starkey), a confusing young man whom Lee can’t quite figure out at first. Is he gay? Is Eugene just an American looking for friends? Why does he often visit many of the same bars as Lee but remains elusive? A conundrum of a person, Eugene eventually strikes up a conversation with Lee, the latter of which invites him back to his apartment.
It’s at Lee’s apartment that the two men establish a bond. They get physical, and all of Lee’s dreams come true for a moment. But after their miraculous night, Eugene brushes off Lee’s continuous advances in ways that become humorous to anyone watching these two men interact.
Over time, their connection becomes more solid as Eugene agrees to travel to South America with Lee, and what starts as a travel companionship evolves into a love affair. But Lee’s propensity for drugs and his secret past as a criminal in the United States make him an unlikable protagonist in Eugene’s ongoing story. The two men fight just as much as they have sex, and it isn’t before long that their situationship strains to a point of no return.
“Queer” is a strange fever dream of exploration into what it was like to be a gay man living in another country after World War II. Daniel Craig’s version of Lee is initially comedic until he simply becomes sad to watch, always longing for connection and his next fix. Starkey is marvelous in a quasi-ingenue role, propelling their intimate scenes to almost pornographic territory.
But Guadagnino pushes the boundaries of disgust throughout the film, particularly during a pointed sequence when the two men imbibe on ayahuasca in the jungles of South America to disastrous effect. For a movie whose main themes deal heavily with connection, these surrealist scenes give credence to the strange characters in what could only be described as a Hunter S. Thompson-type romp through Latin American countries.
Queerness is represented here as an expression of being emotionally and physically disconnected from others and oneself. But the source material and Kuritzkes’ script make this concept almost like it’s “Trainspotting” for gays, using the word “queer” more than 100 times in the first hour alone. The movie is more akin to Guadagnino’s supernatural remake “Suspiria” rather than his moving tribute to queer love in “Call Me By Your Name.”
Though the two actors at the center of this drama are exceptional in their individual roles, the movie leaves a lot to be desired in terms of questioning how it is that connection with another living, breathing human being can be achieved. The 1940s setting is superseded by Guadagnino’s choice to use Nirvana and other 1990s rock music to flank the melodic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, often a distraction from the premise at play. A series of odd decisions by the filmmaking duo to push the boundaries of disturbing computer-generated effects don’t land the plane as emotionally touching as they think it does.
Lee may be flawed, but he deserves a little better.
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