'Queer,' the newest shit smear from Luca Garbagenino

I've never wished more for a heroin addict to OD

“Queer” is the latest vapid titillation from Luca Guadagnino, probably the most overrated living filmmaker in the world. For about a decade now, Guadagnino has worked at a relentless pace, releasing one empty, soulless slick-looking piece of shit after another – and audiences love it.

Guadagnino is good at some things. He makes beautiful looking pictures, with one arresting image after another. He’s great at spectacle. His specialty is getting gorgeous, famous heterosexual men to whip out their cocks or grab each other’s firm asses in simulations of gay sex. And his soundtracks slap, whether they’re original scores by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross or carefully curated playlists of too-cool-for-school Gen X alternative staples. This is why people enjoy his movies. They’re just vibes.

But vibes work better in advertisements than cinema. The characters in a Guadagnino movie never really come alive. They’re behind the glass with the pretty pictures. You can’t connect to them. They’re contrivances. There is nothing authentic, no real feeling or emotion. “Queer” is no different.

“Queer” is based on a semi-autobiographical novella by William S. Burroughs, which I haven’t read. (If I keep writing this newsletter, you’ll notice a recurring theme is I haven’t read the book.) The place is 1950s Mexico City, where a group of expat American white homosexual men only hang out with each other, speak limited Spanish, and have zero meaningful interaction with the locals. This aspect of Mexico City apparently hasn’t changed in 70 years.

They identify as queer, which is evidently a better kind of homosexual to be than a faggot or the dreaded queen, also mentioned. Lest you forget that the men in this movie are queer, you will hear the word “queer” every two to ten minutes. (“Is he a queer?” “I’m queer.” “You’re a queer!”) No one is gay – or happy for that matter.

Unhappiest of all is William Lee, the Burroughs surrogate, played by Daniel Craig. Craig gives such a fully transformative performance, you will forget this brusque, soused junkie has the same face as James Bond. (Like many 50-something alcoholic heroin addicts, Lee also has the same jacked CrossFit body as James Bond.) As Lee, Craig is a bull in a china shop. Clipped, full of sharp movements, he is always leaping out of his seat, slamming a glass on the table, packing the next cigarette, bursting through the door. Unfortunately, Lee is such a deeply unpleasant, loathsome, despicable, vile, irritating mess that you wish he would just fucking OD and die so you can get the hell out of the theater. You don’t care about Craig’s performance because it’s no fun to watch.

“I don’t like being around that guy,” a milquetoast twink who brushes off Lee’s sexual advances tells his friend as Lee walks away within earshot. Imagine how we feel in the audience for two and a quarter hours! Ninety percent of Craig’s mumbled dialogue in “Queer” is completely incomprehensible, just obliterated, moronic rambling out of Lee’s mouth that seems to entertain him more than anyone else. It’s awful, just like being around a real addict.

Lee doesn’t seem to do much other than get shitfaced, run his mouth, try to fuck, and shoot heroin – so naturally he is a writer. He hangs out with his repulsive friend Joe, an Allen Ginsberg stand-in played by a gelatinous Jason Schwartzman in a performance that should invite an angry denunciation from GLAAD. Lee walks around with a pistol on his waist, and you wish to god he would use it to blow his own fucking brains out. When he sees a twink he gives big “Death in Venice” energy, and is either indifferent or oblivious to the fact that most of these young men find him repellent.

Inexplicably, Lee manages to get a couple of these cuties into bed. First is a beautiful Mexican hustler with a nasty front tooth, played by the singer Omar Apollo. The scenes between Lee and the hustler are kind of sweet and in a nice touch, Guadagnino doesn’t subtitle the Spanish. I appreciate that Apollo goes full frontal cock out, but like Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name” – one of the worst movies of all time – the sex scenes in “Queer” promise to be steamy but are at best lukewarm. Like when Timothee and Armie finally got into bed in “Call Me By Your Name,” Guadagnino again in “Queer” cuts away to what’s going on out the window with the trees when the butt sex is happening.

“Call Me By Your Name” felt like one big cocktease. I remember when it came out, I didn’t believe Guadagnino was gay. A gay guy couldn’t have made this shallow, purple drivel, I thought. It felt like a straight man’s fantasy about gay youth. I later found out this was true. It was based on a novel written by a straight man. I wonder if part of the problem with “Queer” is that Guadagnino handed writing duties to Justin Kuritzkes, the straight man who wrote “Challengers,” the most overrated movie of the year. Kuritzkes is married to Celine Song, the writer and director of “Past Lives.” Presumably that means he is the basis for the schmucky Jewish husband in that movie. Being a beta male cuck who people call gay as a pejorative is not the same lived experience as sucking another man’s cock.

Speaking of sucking another man’s cock, eventually Lee sets his sights on Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a young G.I. who is as sexy as he is dull. Allerton hangs out with a red headed woman who doesn’t have any lines. Is she his girlfriend or some fag hag or a lesbian? Lee isn’t sure and he can’t quite figure out whether Allerton really is queer. One of the big problems with this movie is that Allerton is so underwritten he is a totally elusive figure. I get that he is supposed to be unknowable to Lee, but to the audience, Allerton is just a hot cipher. (Starkey also goes full frontal, but is apparently wearing a false penis. Another demerit.)

Lee gets Allerton so drunk he pukes. Then they have their first sexual encounter. (“Does my breath taste like vomit?” Allerton asks.) Lee blows Allerton and then Allerton gives Lee a handjob that lasts 10 seconds, because as everyone knows, 50 year old drunk men on heroin can totally get their dicks hard and cum really fast. (Guadagnino has promised this movie has “lots of cum,” but honestly I would say there was only a little bit of cum and you can see lots more in movies like “Something About Mary” or that episode of “Sex and the City” with the tantric sex workshop.) Allerton doesn’t seem to like Lee all that much (who would?), yet he decides to accompany Lee on a trip to Ecuador and let Lee fuck him in the ass. Maybe Allerton is just the Jon Ebeling to Lee’s Brian Jordan Alvarez.

After an excruciating, languidly paced first two acts – which includes a two minute long tutorial on how to shoot heroin – things finally get interesting at the end. Lee becomes obsessed with ayahuasca, believing it can give him telepathic capabilities. Maybe if he can just communicate with Allerton on a higher plane, Allerton will truly be his.

The not-quite-a-couple set off into the rainforest, where they find Dr. Cotter, a psychonaut played by an unrecognizable Leslie Manville. Grubby, in a greasy black wig with green teeth and no eyebrows, Manville shocks “Queer” to life. She’s a bonafide loony toon who uses her gun as a pointer finger. I would rather watch a movie about Cotter living in the jungle, licking toads, hanging out with her fake looking CGI serpent, and banging her much younger native boyfriend. At least she supplies the ayahuasca, which leads to one of the more interesting moments between Lee and Allerton.

Apparently Burroughs never completed “Queer,” so Guadagnino and Kuritzkes are left to their own devices at the end. They go the “2001: A Space Odyssey” route and take Lee on an agonizing metaphysical journey across time and space. We see a dream sequence where Lee and Allerton play William Tell, Lee finally using his pistol to shoot at a glass on Allerton’s head, killing him by accident. In real life, Burroughs killed his wife this way and got away with it – because society values women about as much as this movie.

Watching the scene in “Queer,” I kept thinking I’ve seen this before and I’ve seen it better. I had. This exact same scene plays out multiple times in David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” the only other feature adaptation of a Burroughs book. (I haven’t read that one either.) “Naked Lunch” is a far more inventive, bizarre, and psychedelic movie. It’s not as overtly gay, but it does feature a shapeshifting centipede rapist that devours young men – which is far more queer than anything that happens in “Queer.”

“Queer” is now playing in theaters.