Reviewers are praising Luca Guadagnino’s Queer: ‘A remarkable achievement’

The reviews of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, are out, and critics are largely united in praise – with many focusing on Daniel Craig’s performance.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by William S. Burroughs, Queer features Bond star Craig as William Lee, an outcast American expat and troubled alcoholic and drug addict in Mexico City.

He spends his days searching for men to sleep with to cure his loneliness, before encountering former US sailor Eugene Allerton, played by Drew Starkey, with whom he becomes infatuated.

Despite an age gap, alongside Eugene’s sexual ambiguity and lack of interest, Lee’s advances eventually break through.

Between the pair’s sex scenes, night blurs into day and they end up heading into the South American jungle in search of a telepathy-inducing psychedelic.

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What are the critics saying about Queer?

The reviews have been mostly the positive and the film has a 76 per cent Tomatometer rating. 

The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey said Queer “treats desire equally as a kind of supernatural possession” as in the director’s earlier film Challengers. “It’s a feverish, agonised document of addiction and abortive passion, into which [he] has weaved further elements of the author’s life,” she continued.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, said: “This hypnotic, often moving, film speaks eloquently – in some scenes, graphically – about queer carnal ecstasy and the difficulty of its pursuit. It is a remarkable achievement by the prolific Guadagnino… [and] Craig is mesmerising.”

Writing in Esquire, Henry Wong said: “Craig, channelling a whiff of his southern Knives Out detective, really sells Lee’s desperation – for drugs, for boys, for Allerton – and Starkey brings a handsome aloofness to proceedings.”

APNews’ Mark Kennedy also praised Craig, describing him as a “revelation” and “a wonder in a fedora”.

Manohla Dargis told readers of The New York Times: “Craig isn’t just committing to this role, he is also throttling his Bond. There’s swagger in his step, though as one drink follows another, he begins to [resemble] one of those decrepit gunslingers in old westerns, the kind who enters soused and stumbling but retains his decency and quick draw.”

Queer is in cinemas now.

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