Queer (2024)

Were it not for the fact that it features an ex "007", I reckon this would be an almost instantly forgettable gay-themed drama that could easily be found on Dekkoo in a year to two. Anyway, Daniel Craig is the independently wealthy "Lee" and living in a Mexico City where in between tequila and heroine sessions, he tries to pick up young men. He's not a bad looker and so usually gets some entertainment (paid for, or otherwise) but then he spots an enigmatic young man who comes to their local bar to play chess with a red-headed woman. Intrigued, his usually effective introductions seem to fall on beautiful but disinterested eyes and ears, but he persists and soon manages to befriend student "Eugene" (Drew Starkey). Even though they drink and chat together, he still isn't sure if his new challenge is even eligible for some furious jogging. Indeed, the young man is so completely non-committal and tractable that it's impossible for him to be sure about almost anything about him. Napoleon brandy might help provide an answer, and it does - of sorts, but an extremely satisfactory one for the older man who is clearly becoming obsessed with a man who at best displays indifference to him. "Lee" isn't used to this sensation, but he simply has to have something more meaningful with this man. He cannot just be an another notch on the bedpost, and so he turns his mind to a trip round South America and to take a travelling companion. Why there? Well he's read of a secret plant that he believes both the KGB and CIA are using for it's famed telepathic powers. Perhaps if he finds it, he can reach into the very mind of his gorgeous antagonist? What the men do manage to find in the midst of the Ecuadorian jungle is Lesley Manville and at this point the wheels really came off for me. At the very end, the closing slide says "William S. Burroughs' Queer" as if Luca Guadagnino was saying to us - 'don't blame me". Sure there are some sex scenes, but they are all blink and you'll miss them (and in the trails anyway), so what are we actually left with? A story of an ageing drunk and a narcissistic young man playing a rather depressing form of "cat and mouse" meets "house"? To be fair, Craig delivers strongly indeed, but to what end? His character has nowhere to go, and his range of dependencies are neither attractive nor especially plausible as the second half of the story enters the surreal in quite a desperate way. Starkey has very few meaningful lines and so relies on his perfectly man-scaped appearance to present a persona that is easy on the eye but not remotely troubling for the brain, and that's largely in keeping with the whole story that just lacks substance. It's bizarrely unfulfilling on just about every front and really quite characteristically impotent. There's simply nothing natural about it and as tale of flawed humanity goes, well so what - I didn't care. It looks good, sounds good and has an altogether polished finish to it, but like a meringue there's little to delve into.