It's a thrilling tale of addiction and love at the same time, with Craig, who's on the hunt for Drew Starkey's object of desire, giving Burroughs an endearing vulnerability.
Watch: Daniel Craig and Luca Guadagnino Bring 'Queer' to Venice Film Festival
By Owen Gleiberman
In "Queer," Luca Guadagnino's exuberantly filthy and adventurous adaptation of William S. Burroughs' early confessional novel, William Lee (Daniel Craig), a lost refugee from America, is having dinner with Eugene (Drew Starkey), the handsome young man he met in the underbelly of Mexico City, as he begins to explain how he came to terms with his sexual desires.
Lee, wearing white linen suits, a hat and clear-rimmed glasses, a trusty pistol and an appraising frown, looks like the dandy version of a CIA spy. It's the early 1950s, and though he drinks all day and often looks disheveled, he's a kind of Straight Arrow in appearance and behavior. At first, he says, he considered his proclivities a "curse." He trembled at the word "homosexual," which made him think of "the painted, slimy female impersonators," he says. "Could I be one of those subhumans?"
