Queer: Here’s what critics had to say about Luca Guadagnino’s gay drama

The verdict is in for Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey’s gay period drama Queer.

Over the last few months, LGBTQIA+ movie enthusiasts have anxiously awaited the release of Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film.

Set in the 1940’s, Queer follows Lee (Craig) as he flees a drug bust in New Orleans. He wanders the bars and clubs of Mexico City, where he becomes infatuated with Starkey’s character, a discharged serviceman from the American Navy.

Based on William S. Burrough’s 1985 short novel of the same name, which explores themes such as homosexuality, sex and drug abuse, the film also stars Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Henry Zaga, Drew Droege, Ariel Schulman and Omar Apollo in his acting debut.

On 3 September, the two-hour and 15-minute film finally made its highly-anticipated premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival. 

Fortunately, the months-long hype was well deserved, with many attending critics praising Guadagnino’s new project.

Indie Wire’s Deputy Editor (Film), Ryan Lattanzio, gave the drama a solid A rating, praising Craig’s “heartbreaking“ performance and the gut-wrenching plot.

“Queer is about chemical addictions, yes. But it’s even more about being so addicted to a person that, no matter how much you turn yourself inside out trying to get them to love you –– charming them with your literary voice, lathering yourself into a stupor on drugs, or even going to the far reaches of a jungle –– they will never love you the way you want them to, and even telepathy couldn’t help explain to you why,“ he wrote in his extensive review.

My Desert/USA Today entertainment reporter, Ema Sasic, echoed similar sentiments, adding that Queer takes the phrase sex, drugs and rock ‘n‘ roll “to a whole new level.”

“Full of steamy love scenes and an audacious vision, but one that’ll be extremely divisive. It’s Daniel Craig like you’ve never seen him before, and a star-making moment for Drew Starkey,“ she tweeted.

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter shined a light on the film’s cinematography, adding: “It’s heady and beautiful, finding dreamy visual poetry even in the tawdriness and squalor. The air seems pervaded by palpable strains of both sensuality and desolation.”

Daniel Craig in Queer

NME‘s Matthew Turner gave it a four out of five stars, writing: “Guadagnino’s most inspired touch is the surreal way he dovetails the drug-taking and the sex in the final act, with an inspired piece of digital effects work making it seem as if Lee and Allerton are blurring together, literally becoming one.”

Radhika Seth, British Vogue‘s film and culture editor, had a different viewpoint of the film.

“Sadly, the sun-soaked, dust-coated drama – a meandering and often mournful tour of 1950s Mexico City, and then South America, through a haze of tequila, heroin and, later, ayahuasca – eventually becomes a slog, though it has two redeeming factors: Daniel Craig, who stars as the film’s loquacious, scenery-chewing anti-hero, and Outer Banks’s Drew Starkey as the quiet, inscrutable object of his affection,” Radhika said in her review.

As of this writing, a wide release date for the film has yet to be announced.

Check out an official clip from Queer here or below.

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