"I am not queer, I'm disembodied" - Luca Guadagnino's Queer
I am not queer, I'm disembodied.
Wold's opera is fascinating and moving, but very different from Guadagnino's film treatment which in it's own way is rather operatic.
While I was fully engaged in the story, it was nonetheless impossible for my mind not to wander, back a few times to other films that may for others not seem to have a connection but for me most definitely did. Principally, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and Ken Russell's Altered States - and while I tried to push each out of my head, I could not unsee relationships between all three films that . . . frankly delighted me in a weird way. (Full disclosure: as one who in youth had a fascination - and my own relationship to altered states of being or conciousness, stories exploring heightened, out-of-body experiences are among my favorites.)
That difficulty of self acceptance, of not truly believing one is worthy . . . or good enough, is crippling, paralyzing (words I've come to know intimately on other levels these last years). Okay, I said I don't like Lee. But I can say this - I love him. Those are two vastly different things. My not liking him means I wouldn't want him as a friend - not for long (I've had such friends), but my loving him means, I care about what happens to him, that I'm willfully going along on his journey which, as much as it angers me, also breaks my heart. Craig puts all of this into his depiction of Burrough's alter ego, and the screen explodes with life whether he's putting on his hat, pouring a drink, or getting ready to give a blow job. The intensity of his inner grief, his desperate cumpulsion for love masked by casual, noncomittal sex - all of it is masked by the show. It was impossible for me not to feel all of this down to my marrow.
Equally impressive is the glassy, outwardly less volatile performance of Allerton by Drew Starkey. Some consider Allerton the antithesis or complete opposite of Lee: younger, less needy, more socially acceptable, not as loud, but I think that's wrong. It's his own mask, covering his inner fears and needs every bit as much as Lee's own camouflage. Each is, regardless of the outer shell, mirror reflections of the other. Allerton's need to, but inability to commit to Lee.
Together these damaged souls journey to the Ecuadorian jungle to explore the possibilities of what they could mean to each other, by having the full ayahuasca experience. There, the hallucinogenic effect of the drug allows them to move into another realm, but for one of them it's an experience that goes too far.
Guadagnino in interviews during Queer's festival runs stated that the story is not about an unrequited love, but about two people deeply in love, but "not in sync with each other. It wasn't a story about someone trying to convince somebody else to love him back, it was about the possibility within the impossibility. Got it? Yeah. That is a load and a half to wrap one's head around . . . at least for my tiny brain. And I love that.
Guadagnino brings back cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom whose work in Call Me By Your Name was brilliant, but here is allowed to go into another realm. Visually, Queer is as impressive as anything I have seen in Sci-fi or fantasy in years.
While the rest of the cast has less to do, every one of them are brilliant. I did not know Jason Schwartzman (who I love) was even in this movie, and it took me a moment - and hitting pause to freeze frame, wondering thinking, "is this? before Googling the cast. Bravo, Jason! Similarly, Lesley Manville (who I know chiefly from some excellent Brit TV series) was entirely unrecognizable - and spectacular as Dr. Cotter.
I haven't gone into the story much - I don't like giving or getting spoilers, and don't know how to write a synopsis without giving it all away. At least not heere. I will, however, say the film explores and expands Burrough's story considerably more, reaching much further than than his incomplete novel. In that regard, Guadagnino and Mukdeeprom have the luxury (or take the liberty) to deliciously shoot their movie through with magnificent symbolism and weirdness that explores Burrough's actual life as much as it does his alter ego, Lee's. Sometimes those symbols can feel out of place, confusing - which is good. Unless, of course you don't like that sort of thing.
As for me, it's just Queer enough and one of the best films of 2024.