Queer

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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From the usually edgy Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”), here is “Queer” based on the novella by the enigmatic Beat author William S. Burroughs. The film directed here is rather tame and somewhat pedestrian, given the unconventional subject matter of an addicted gay man hunting for spacey hallucinogens.

This film is somewhat more prosaic than “Naked Lunch,” David Cronenberg’s 1991 film about another similar Bill Lee, there an exterminator in Morocco. It is well to keep in mind that Burroughs work is difficult to adapt, given that he deals with stream of consciousness time slippage and an idiosyncratic imagery of addiction and extraterrestrial life.

In the late 1950s, Bill Lee (Daniel Craig) is a lonely addict in Mexico City. After chatting with Joe (Jason Schwartzman), a quasi Allen Ginsberg type, Bill spies a quiet bookish young man playing chess with a woman. Bill is transfixed by the nearly silent man who resembles a version of himself. He yearns to approach him but cannot summon the courage. Bill chain smokes, drinks, and then bolts out into the afternoon sun with sudden caprice to look for the man.

On a pretense, Bill gets the man Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) to stop, and the two make plans to meet.

Bill has an intense desire for Eugene but because of addiction he can’t follow through in his pursuit. He sweats and gnashes his teeth. One night they do engage in sex, resulting in Bill taking a submissive role.

Afterwards, partly in fear of losing Eugene and also because of illness, Bill tries to persuade Eugene to go to Ecuador with him in the hope of finding Ayahuasca.

Eugene consents.

The film is lethargic at the start, spending a bit too much time with Bill Lee at a slow-moving bar. The pace accelerates when the odd pair arrives in Quito in search of sacred substances.

Though Daniel Craig is often silent or mumbling in this role, there is strange terror in his eyes while his face manages to bubble and twist. He completely embodies the William Burroughs character. This is a cinematic reach for Craig, known for his brutish action roles, and he succeeds. The camera absorbs his fearful plasticine incarnation. The actor’s weathered face and reptilian eyes speak volumes.

Drew Starkey gives a fine if somewhat uniform performance as Craig’s foil and reflection.

The most jarring portrayal goes to Leslie Manville as a volatile shaman.

Craig hits all the right notes here, oscillating from eerie observation to frightening panic leading to a kind of pre-natal state of inaction. One feels the frisson of an addict, its sudden hijinks as well as a mercurial menace.

While the sights are less otherworldly and more quotidian than Cronenberg’s previous vision, there is an arresting segment of two bodies melting in upon the other. There are no reptiles and less insects but like “Naked Lunch,” this is still an ancestral trip down Burroughs’ Wonderland, where the sight of a shot glass on a male head brings him to the death of Joan Vollmer on September 6, 1951. The author yearns for a trip to the amniotic Amazon, a place before birth.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com