Queer review: Lavishly imaginative, humidly erotic

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in Queer (Image: A24)

William S. Burroughs’ short, semi-autobiographical novel Queer is stark, grimy and rough at the edges — not terms you’d generally apply to the work of Italian director Luca Guadagnino, one of the lushest sensualists working in the movies today. Yet the marriage of their authorial sensibilities proves an exciting one in this sprawling, lavishly imaginative, humidly erotic adaptation.

Guadagnino’s first overtly queer-themed film since 2017’s Call Me by Your Name is an exploration of gay desire both unfulfilled and run riot, recalling Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle in its vision of a heightened world where every building, every garment, every whisky glass is charged with sexual possibility.

It also gives Daniel Craig his most adventurous role since his pre-Bond days, reminding us of the unguarded

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