23/46
Quoted in Close-Up: Why Do We Need the Venice Film Festival?
Narrative
Lee recounts his life in Mexico City among expatriate American college students and bar owners living on part-time jobs and welfare. He drives himself to court a young man named Allerton, whose film is based on Adelbert Lewis Marker. IMDb editor Arno Kazarian gives brief glimpses of 12 films he has screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival, including Anora and the dangerous, strangely erotic Misericordia. Luca Guadagnino stated in an interview that Queer was a project he had wanted to do since he was 20. (2024). QUEER bears strong similarities to the same director’s CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.
He is played superbly by Daniel Craig
The main character in both films is clearly gay, while the object of his desire is harder to pin down. As in the earlier film, we are not in America, but among Americans. Whereas the protagonist in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME was a sexually vibrant youth, here our focus is on a drug and alcohol addicted middle-aged writer. The first part of QUEER is a “will they?”/”won’t they?”, as Craig’s character William Lee pines for/desires fresh-faced ex-soldier Eugene Allerton, played superbly by Drew Starkey. With excellent support from Jason Schwartzman and Drew Droege, who play other denizens of the local cafes and bars, the film maintains a steady pace. The screenplay (Justin Kuritzkes, based on the book by William S.
Burrough) and direction are as confident as you’d expect
But the film picks up the pace in the final third of the film, when Lee and Allerton go on a field trip to find a plant that Lee knows could unlock the human ability for telepathy. This unlikely adventure eventually leads to an encounter with a certain Dr. Cotter, whom they find deep in the jungle conducting research. Dr. Cotter is played in an astonishing performance by the great Lesley Manville. Her transformation is so complete that it is initially unrecognizable.
She is simply great
It is fascinating that even a great actor like Daniel Craig is unfortunately somewhat overshadowed by a great actress like Manville in a role in which she is shown to her best advantage. She is doing nothing but her job. Please give this woman an Oscar. QUEER is made with great care, has many remarkable sequences and, interestingly, as Guardagnino himself said, owes much to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It is a film about the deep desire to make contact with another human being, even to merge. In that sense, like the best films by Powell and Pressburger, it is immensely romantic.
It’s worth watching
To some, this may seem exaggerated. For me, the difference between, say, BLACK NARCISSUS or A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH and this film is that I ended up just watching QUEER and I wasn’t as swept away as I was by CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, which I must admit is a worse film. But go see QUEER. Check out our list of exciting new films from this year’s film festivals, including Venice, TIFF, the New York Film Festival and more.
