Review: Daniel Craig casts a spell you won't want to break in 'Queer'

By Peter Travers

Forget all the pearl clutching over Daniel Craig wiggling out of his James Bond bondage to take on a gay role in "Queer," now in theaters where the dark dazzle of the Brit star's portrayal just won him a Golden Globe nomination as best actor in a drama. Is Oscar next? That's the idea.

It's not that Craig hasn't previously escaped Hollywood's heteronormative bubble, most recently swanning through the smash "Knives Out" franchise as super-sleuth Benoit Blanc, a southern gentleman with a lover tucked away in the flirty person of Hugh Grant. But that's all in fun, except for the detractors who can't see the point of straight actors in gay roles.

Snap out of it. Outside the gender politics, "Queer" offers something raw and relatable through its in-deep portrait of longing, complicated by sex and drugs. Virtuoso director Luca Guadagnino found the heat and heart in "Call Me By Your Name." And now, working with his simpatico "Challengers" screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, he does it again.

A24

A still from "Queer," 2024.

"Queer" is based on the life of Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, who was just beginning to rattle literary cages when he left his home in the states in the 1950s to drift around Mexico City as an expat in search of inspiration and available young studs.

Burroughs was also escaping a homicide charge for trying to shoot a highball glass off the head of his wife, Joan Vollmer, and accidentally killing her instead. Craig lets us see the guilt glinting in Lee's eyes, a shame he can't obliterate with lust, booze and opioids, hard as he tries.

Craig's character is called William Lee, a pseudonym Burroughs used in his early days as a writer before he made his name with "Junkie" and his surreal masterwork "Naked Lunch." But it's "Queer," which came between the two, that remains his most intimate and indelible self portrait. And Craig digs into the role like an actor possessed.  

We meet Lee in a bar, cruising a pickup played with carnal magnetism by singer Omar Apollo. As Lee talks with his friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman doing a full-bodied take on Beat poet Allen Ginsberg), his gaze locks hard on a young stranger who makes him sweat through his linen suits.

The stranger is Eugene Allerton. As played with seductive reticence by "Outer Banks" sensation Drew Starkey, Gene is just out of the army, sporting a model's fashion ease and an aloof allure that Lee can't resist. It's crushing to see Lee try to grab Gene's attention with a deep bow and an awkward dance move. Craig radiates a stabbing pathos that takes your breath away.

A24

A still from "Queer," 2024.

Lee and Gene develop a one-sided relationship that recalls Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love" for the hurt that comes with unrequited passion. Lee offers an all-expense-paid trip to South America as an inducement, asking only that Gene "be nice to me" for a few days a week.

Lee is asking for more than sex. He wants a telepathic understanding of what Gene is thinking and feeling. The way in is a drug that can only be found in the jungles of Ecuador in the form of a hallucinogen called yagé, aka ayahuasca, and only a hut-dwelling, eccentric American botanist, Dr. Cotter, can provide it An unrecognizable Lesley Manville plays the doc in ways too wild and weird to spoil. She's a nutso revelation.

Sadly, the film's last section goes off the rails, leaving a visual muddle where enlightenment is supposed to be. No shade on Guadagnino and the brilliant Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who created visual miracles by shooting on soundstages in Rome.

What indisputably works about "Queer" is Craig who seems to tear his performance from his insides. Craig doesn't just know how Lee moves, speaks and listens, he knows how he breathes. He casts a spell you won't want to break. The same goes for this flawed, fascinating movie.