Queer

Luca Guadagnino's flawed but fascinating gay love story is lifted to the heights by Daniel Craig who captures his character’s sexual heat and yearning heart in a performance he seems to tear from his insides. Is an Oscar nomination next? That’s the idea.

Guadagnino has followed up this year’s triumphant tennis drama Challengers with a film that would seem miles apart, yet treats desire equally as a kind of supernatural possession.

There is not a trace of Burroughs in the film, neither in the flaky narrative nor the prosaic tone. ... Worse still, Guadagnino’s screenplay reduces William Lee to a barroom bore. When the credits finally roll, it’s a welcome escape.


It’s Craig’s powerful performance that makes it. Much is asked of him and he delivers. In lesser hands, Lee would definitely be repellent, but Craig deploys his ravaged charisma to imbue him with such pain and longing and woundedness that we feel for him.

Craig is impossible to look away from; his bouts of desperation and all-consuming yearning command your attention at every turn in a way that feels both highly manicured yet totally disheveled.

A feverish, quietly sad exploration of longing and infatuation. Its lack of focus stifles the experience, but Daniel Craig has rarely been as compelling a watch.

Beautifully written by Justin Kuritzkes (who did such a fine job on Challengers), Queer is a sad and sordid portrait of a life derailed by addiction and bigotry that’s dryly and sometimes farcically funny.

“Queer” is more of a William S. Burroughs film than a Guadagnino one.

There’s an emperor’s new clothes feeling to the general style, look closely and there's very little there.

Debatable creative adventuring aside, there’s not much to the endeavor, which carries on for far too long, following actors well out of their range.