The closure of Merrill’s Roxy Cinemas in Burlington hasn’t made it any easier to see the 2025 award contenders in Vermont, but some of those films are trickling to us. Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door is at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, with The Brutalist and Hard Truths starting January 24. And if you’re curious to catch Daniel Craig’s performance in Queer, for which the former James Bond won an award from the National Board of Review and a Golden Globe nom, you can still see it on a big screen.
Adapted from William S. Burroughs’ novella of the same name by Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me by Your Name), Queer plays at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury from Friday, January 24, through Thursday, February 6. In Burlington, Vermont International Film Foundation will screen the movie on Thursday, February 13, 7 p.m., at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center Film House.
The deal
In 1950 Mexico City, middle-aged William Lee (Craig) enjoys an expatriate existence that appears to consist mostly of drifting from bar to restaurant to bar, trading witty barbs with a friend (Jason Schwartzman) and attempting to pick up young men. His give-no-fucks attitude is clear from the first scene, in which he lazily trolls someone who isn’t receptive to his advances.
Then Lee spots clean-cut GI Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who inspires him to try a little harder. Allerton is friendly yet maddeningly elusive. He may or may not be bisexual. He’s obviously bored when Lee holds forth during dinner, describing his personal coming-out odyssey, but he’s eager to hook up afterward.
The two share moments of tender intimacy and others of painful, cringe-worthy alienation. Lee persuades Allerton to accompany him to Ecuador on a quest for yage (or ayahuasca), which he’s heard can induce telepathy — the unmediated togetherness of which he dreams. But Lee is already dependent on heroin, and his junk sickness in transit drives the couple further apart.
Will you like it?
Like Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, Queer isn’t so much a story as a vibe, an immersive study of a character and a historical moment. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who also wrote the more plot-driven Challengers, gives Craig and Schwartzman plenty of pungent banter. But the real action happens in the spaces between the words, which are filled by the immaculate production design and camera work, strong performances, and evocative soundtrack.
The filmmakers lean hard on the autobiographical aspect of Burroughs’ novella, making Queer more accessible to those who know the basics of his life and legend. We guess at Lee’s occupation from a few shots of his typewriter, though he describes himself only as being “of independent means.” His drug habit is introduced with a lengthy shooting-up scene midway through the film, which isn’t treated as a surprise. A hallucinatory sequence visually alludes to Burroughs’ notorious shooting of his wife. Even the jarring yet rousing use of Nirvana songs means more to those who recognize Burroughs’ role in the counterculture that eventually produced Nevermind.
Queer is nothing like a standard author biopic, though — or a typical Hollywood gay love story. Lee is proudly acerbic and antisocial, sometimes petty and cruel, yet also relatable in his loneliness and yearning for a deeper connection. Craig nails the hypereducated over-enunciation of Burroughs’ speech (see sidebar for films featuring the author himself) even as he crafts a layered and consistently interesting character, nothing like a mere impersonation.
While Lee is set in his ways and so world-weary that he’s eager to escape into other planes of existence, Starkey’s Allerton has the sunny blandness of someone who’s still experimenting with possible identities. The scenes of their courtship and sex are sometimes passionate but never idealized or soft-focus, and the frankness is refreshing.
Kuritzkes and Guadagnino diverge from their source material in making Lee’s quest for psychedelic fulfillment successful. Queer has a vein of David Lynchian surrealism (RIP) that starts with the inky, oil-painting cinematography of the nocturnal Mexico City scenes and grows more pronounced in the third act, when Lesley Manville does a darkly hilarious turn as a botanist living deep in the jungle. Without spoiling: Things get weird.
Far from the manifesto that its no-apologies title might suggest, Queer is a leisurely mood piece that may frustrate some viewers. There’s no rising action or satisfying denouement, not much symmetry in the narrative to match that of the visuals. But the film’s artistry holds our attention, and there’s something heartfelt and touching about Guadagnino’s homage to the messed-up brokenness of humans and their fumbling efforts to come together.
If you like this, try…
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010; Kanopy, Pluto TV, Redbox, Tubi, rentable): According to the New York Times review, Yony Leyser’s documentary portrait of the author is a “genealogy of hip” that links Burroughs to other countercultural icons and “goes into considerable depth about his homosexuality.”
Drugstore Cowboy (1989; PLEX, Pluto TV, Tubi, rentable): Queer features a glimpse of the older Lee in a black suit. It’s reminiscent of the real Burroughs as he appeared in Gus Van Sant’s cult period drama, playing a priest who sings the praises of narcotics and predicts the rise of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
A Single Man (2009; Kanopy, PLEX, Roku Channel, Tubi, rentable): If you enjoy moody, painterly, midcentury-set dramas about gay icons, you’ll love Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel about a Los Angeles professor (Colin Firth) grieving his partner.
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2025.
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