Is luca guadagnino gay

Queer

2024

Rewatched 26Nov2024

Brian 🐒’s review published on Letterboxd:

I reflect both me and Justin [Kuritzkes] divide a passion for seduction in that we like the idea of making people connect with what they notice, and also be entertained by what they see. So for us, the idea that this could become not only a excellent love story, but possibly the ultimate love story—and a very universal one—was irresistible. What is irresistible is the idea that you take Burroughs, and you make him universal.

—Luca Guadagnino in Variety

But what, exactly, constitutes “universal” treasure in the operate of Luca Guadagnino? The objects of desire themselves are of a fairly specific cast: youthful white men, conventionally attractive, always falling somewhere on a relatively narrow spectrum between twink and twunk. Nothing unusual there; it’s no surprise that his casting announcements are invariably met with widespread enthusiasm online (I don’t exempt myself from this). More pertinent to the issue at hand is what these men are not: specifically, they are not gay. Timothée Chalamet’s characters in Call Me By Your Name and

QUEER
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Released November 27, 2024

Like the novel by William S. Burroughs on which it is based, Luca Guadagnino’s film adaptation of Queer is less about homosexuality than about the agonies and ecstasies of being a soul trapped in an aging, alienated body. Written in the mid-1950s but not released until 1985, Queer is Burroughs’ partial sequel to 1953’s Junkie. The novel is semiautobiographical, like most of Burroughs’ works, and it centers on a group of American expatriates living in Mexico City in 1950. Among them is William Lee, who’s on the lam from American authorities after a drug bust in New Orleans. Lee, who’s addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and heroin, becomes infatuated with a recently discharged American Navy serviceman named Eugene Allerton, who is nearly thirty years his junior. Anguished by this fact, Lee is further tormented by Allerton’s ambivalence. One minute the stunning young man is unbridled in his lust, and the next he is inexplicably apathetic.

In Guadagnino’s quietly surreal and hauntingly romantic film, Lee is played by Daniel Craig, and Allerton is portrayed by Drew Starkey of the popular Netflix seri

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LOS ANGELES (AP) --

One of the first real signs that “Queer” is going to be an unconventional movie is when Daniel Craig in a linen suit saunters through Mexico City during the early ’50s and the soundtrack blasts a song by Nirvana.

It’s a pretty nifty way to explain this story of a man unmoored by time, geography and himself. Craig plays William Lee, an American hiding out in Mexico who spends his time going from bar to bar, knocking back tequila or mescal.

Why is he hiding out? For one thing, he’s a junkie and Mexico is more permissive about heroin use than the States at this second. He’s also gay when being gay was abhorrent and Mexico was, again, more permissive. Lee is part of a wealthy expat contingent that fritters away the days stewed in liquor and gossip.

He doesn’t just sound fancy a William S. Burroughs hero, he’s partly Burroughs himself — “Queer” was a confessional novella written long before his breakthrough novel “Naked Lunch.” So buckle up. You’re going to see some weird stuff.

“Q

Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” Is, Expectedly, an Indulgent Trip

Five days after the industry behemoths Wicked and Gladiator II premiered, the art-house adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novella Queer was also released. On the heels of these splashy mainstream studio films with massive marketing budgets to connect, director Luca Guadagnino presents a contemplative film loosely rooted in the semi-autobiographical content of a middle-aged drifter in search of transcendental love in 1950s Mexico City. While the latter half deviates from the book quite radically, the cadence and intensity of the source text last relatively intact. Audiences rightly hold cosmos for Glinda and Elphaba, but consent us not overlook to catch some comparatively unassuming films taking big swings and making bold choices.

The narrative follows William Lee, an American expat living in Mexico to escape persecution for what appears to be an intensifying opiate addiction. He’s plagued with the melodramatic demeanor and the typewriter collection of an storyteller, but is rarely—if ever—shown writing. The role is masterfully handled by 007 golden boy Daniel Craig, committed to a perfectly neutral, generalize