Queer movie review: Daniel Craig bares it all in a performance that would make Daniel Day-Lewis proud

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Daniel Craig in a still from Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.

It isn’t until Lee spots a young soldier named Gene (newcomer Drew Starkey) that the plot — meandering and undisciplined as it is — truly begins. Lee becomes obsessed with him, perhaps because Gene poses a challenge. He likes the chase, and the possibility of Gene being straight seems to excite him for some reason. Lee begins pursuing him with a singular purpose, showing up at the same bars, hovering near him as he chats up a young woman. Earning Gene’s affections, it seems, would have the same effect on Lee as scoring some heroin. In the background, Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” functions as a mouthpiece for his feelings.

Watching him self-destruct might remind certain millennial audiences of Hank Moody from the show Californication — the character was an amalgamation of dirtbag American poets such as Charles Bukowski, and Burroughs himself. Almost as if he is channeling Lee, Guadagnino devotes considerable energy to giving the film an illusion of beauty. The production design calls attention to itself, as does Thai genius Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s lighting. There is an artifice to Queer’s images; shot at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios, the sets look too immaculate to deserve characters this grimy. Guadagnino’s use of miniatures and rear-projection is also instantly noticeable. It’s as if the movie has a fake smile perpetually plastered on its face.

But it is only after you scrape off this pristine outer layer that you are confronted by its sorry soul. The beauty is put-on, much like Lee’s swagger. He knows he’s doomed, and yet, he speaks with the bravado of someone plotting a coup. Seated at a bar, stinking up the joint with his sweat, Lee looks around after making grand proclamations, as if he is expecting an audience to applaud his every word. When they don’t, he slips back into despair. But Gene stirs something in him, and even though these feelings might be objectionable, you can’t help but stare at this trainwreck of a man. Such is the power of Craig’s performance. It’s the sort of role that his namesake, Daniel Day-Lewis, could conceivably make a meal of. Starkey, on the other hand, is perfectly enigmatic.

Guadagnino seems to delight in subverting the expectations that one might have from him, the man who made Call Me by Your Name. There is tenderness in Queer, too. But the movie is laced with a lasciviousness that was entirely absent from Guadagnino’s breakout English-language film, or, for that matter, from Challengers. And it only gets weirder as it goes along. Chapter two involves Lee and Gene going on a trip to South America. The mood changes. The sinister overtones of the first act are replaced by a sense of liberation. It all leads towards a confounding climactic stretch that defies explanation, and will probably antagonise anybody who showed appreciation for the earlier bits.

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in a still from Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.

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Having heard about a mysterious drug named ayahuasca, Lee convinces Gene to accompany him to the interiors of the Amazon, where he is determined to locate a shaman who can introduce them to the substance’s rumoured telepathic powers. The shaman is played by Lesley Manville; it’s a piece of stunt casting that could rival Tom Cruise’s appearance in Tropic Thunder. Queer’s third act initiates yet another tonal shift. Suddenly, the film begins to resemble something that Hunter S Thompson might have concocted during a bender. Barring the characters, there is little similarity between Queer’s opening and closing 30 minutes. But there’s something admirable about a movie that thumbs its nose at the idea of convention, and rests entirely on the shoulders of a character this broken. Isn’t there?

Queer
Director – Luca Guadagnino
Cast – Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman
Rating – 3/5