Daniel Craig’s ‘horny yet heartbreaking’ new film Queer firmly divides critics

New movie Queer just had its debut at the Venice Film Festival, where it is is one of 21 films competing for the prestigious Golden Lion award.

Often, when buzzy indie films or huge Hollywood blockbusters make their debuts in front of critics, there is at least some general consensus on their quality.

Yet with Call Me by Your Name director Guadagnino’s new film Queer, that’s simply not the case: in terms of reviews, there’s dismal two-stars, middling three-stars, favourable four-stars, and glowing five-stars.

It’s a real mixed bag.

But first, the premise: based on the 1985 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by William S. Burrough (it was originally penned in 1951, but not released for more than three decades), James Bond hero Daniel Craig plays author William Lee, an outcast addict trundling through life in the 1940s. He’s fled New Orleans for New Mexico following a drug bust in the Louisiana city.

While there, he’s bar hopping, downing shots, and leading a life of general debauchery. He meets discharged navy sailor Eugene Allerton (Outer Banks’ Drew Starkey) in one smoky bar, and is immediately infatuated.

Eugene initially rejects his advances, but ultimately relents: cue ample sex scenes, some of which are entirely naked, and weeks of substance-infused nihilism from the two protagonists which ends in a crawl through the jungle in search of the psychoactive drink ayahuasca.

Thankfully, if there is one unifying opinion on Queer, it’s that Craig is absolutely sublime in it. Even the poor reviews take a moment to laud the Knives Out actor for a performance that will no doubt come to define his career as much as being 007 does.

In a grimace-worthy two-star takedown, The Times’ Kevin Maher writes that Craig “delivers possibly his best screen performance” in the film, but even that, he says, is not enough to save “what is nonetheless one of the former Bond star’s least interesting and most ill-disciplined movies.”

Similarly, the Evening Standard’s Jo-Ann Titmarsh slaps Queer with a disappointing two stars, but commends Craig for his “superb” and “excellent” turn as William Lee. Despite Craig’s best attempt at mimicking fellatio, and what Guadagnino eloquently describes as on-screen “f**king”, Titmarsh thought the film needed to be “dirtier”.

“The whorehouses, the filth and the cock fights that Burroughs writes about do not translate convincingly onto the screen,” she writes, plus, “the highly choreographed dream sequences and drug taking also bore and drag the film into the realm of pretentiousness”.

According to the BBC’s Nicholas Barber, Craig’s performance is good, but that doesn’t make the storyline interesting – even with its trippy, drug-fuelled jungle search scenes. 

“Considering how unpredictable this narrative is, you couldn’t say the film was boring, exactly, but you couldn’t say it was gripping, either,” he writes, adding: “It’s difficult to care about any of it.”

This from Guadagnino, the man who created Call Me By Your Name and this year’s horny tennis threesome romp Challengers, apparently makes Queer even more underwhelming. “The love story is nowhere near as affecting as the one in Call Me By Your Name, not to mention those in Guadagnino’s more recent films, Bones and All and Challengers,” Barber laments.

“It’s not as affecting as the one in Casino Royale, either.”

Yet it’s really not all bad. Both The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and The Financial Times’ Raphael Abraham awarded Queer with a not-to-be-sniffed-at four star rating, with the former praising Craig’s “really funny, open, generous performance” and “mesmeric screen presence” in the “strangely magnificent” role. The latter remarks on how refreshing it is to see the Bond actor “so loosey-goosey” and having fun with a role, so much so that it could be “his finest performance to date”.

There are also the rare five-star reviews, too. In The Telegraph, Robbie Collin dubs Guadagnino’s whole thing a masterpiece. 

“Guadagnino’s take on the material is soul-swellingly lush and allusive,” he writes, priaisng Craig as “sensational in a role swimming in psychological complexity, which he marshals with rare intuition and grace”.

He adds: “Queer doesn’t scrimp on provocation and pleasure, but it’s also a beautiful film about male loneliness, and the way a solitary life can so easily shade into a life sentence.”

There is currently no cinema release date for Queer.

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