So much anxiety. You’re in MEXICO! Stop drinking the water!!!
There’s a difference between Chekhov’s gun and Burroughs’ gun. You know perfectly well somebody’s gonna eventually pull a William Tell and it will NOT end well.
Burroughs is an author I respect from afar. Having only tangential exposure to his provocative oeuvre, the complicated relationship between his work and personal life make his scribblings challenging but nevertheless engrossing if approached as both fantastical realism and autobiographical scavenger hunt. Guadagnino’s loving, tender treatment of the outsider author’s most personal, unfinished work has a wistful, melancholy quality; like glancing across the bar only to see a magnificent specimen of human perfection and being unable to move for fear of rejection or even worse, acceptance.
“The Lees have always been perverts.” The first half is a funny, charming jaunt through a sunny, prismatic Mexico City full of snazzy cars, scrappy dogs, and dozens of unflinching bartenders. Craig’s seedy, utterly smitten stand-in for Burroughs is a template for false bravado obscuring a severe loneliness and longing for companionship. It’s a wonder that even with age, the act of posing a seemingly straightforward question creates a rush of anxiety for anyone fearful of the answer. He’s an expert at cruising, but once Drew Starkey’s young, impossibly tempting former soldier breezes by a literal cockfight, all bets are off.
Craig is terrific as the abrasive, but clearly lovelorn Lee and Starkey is an appealing, if intentionally one-dimensional enigma of an ideal. Their first sexual encounter is intense, but sweet. I would’ve been fine with exploring the ups and downs of their relationship all the while scene-stealer Jason Schwartzman would flit in and out armed with an especially witty quip “He’s so queer, I’ve lost interest.” Unfortunately, a locale switch and an uninvolving search for a plant with telepathy-rendering properties known as yage drags the movie to a halt. An unrecognizable Lesley Manville is doing her best in an oddball turn, but even with Guadagnino’s hallucinatory flourishes and some gently touching music (choice needle drops as well), the latter half can’t retain the electricity of the first.
Queer’s willingness to display naked vulnerability is an attribute which allows for both the ball-trippingly bizarro asides and oddly specific, phony CG. It’s a movie about connection which is aces until it goes on the road. As many are apt to say these days: "We shoulda stayed at home."
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