May 20
Report Says Daniel Craig Turns in a Superb Performance in Luca Guadagnino's 'Queer'
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Is the world ready for two smoldering Luca Guadagnino movies in a single year?
The "Call Me by Your Name" director's "Challengers" has hardly hit theaters and already the tea is being spilled that his next movie – the Daniel Craig-starring "Queer" – is a super-sexy showcase for the onetime 007's best work yet.
Early word on the movie has leaked from Cannes, where a writer for World of Reel heard from a producer attending the festival that the three-hour-long film – the second project Guadagnino has undertaken with "Challengers" screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes – is "fantastic."
The film will premiere this summer at the Venice Film Festival, World of Reel noted.
"The film is based on the William S. Burroughs novel that shares its name," Australian newspaper the Star Observer relayed, "a semi-autobiographical tale of the author's life as he struggled with addiction and navigated his own sexuality."
"Though written in the 1950s, it wasn't published until 1985 because of its 'homosexual content,'" the article added.
The movie evidently has "homosexual content" of its own, and plenty of it. Moreover, "Daniel Craig might have delivered the performance of his career," World of Reel said.
Craig has not been shy about playing queer, having starred in the Francis Bacon biopic "Love is the Devil" as the famed painter's male lover, portrayed his "Knives Out" detective as gay, and even intimated during his 15-year, five-film reign as James Bond, that the celebrated 007 was bisexual.
Burroughs' works are singular in style and perspective, often focusing on drug use and LGBTQ+ characters. His most famous novel, "Naked Lunch," was long deemed to be unfilmable, but David Cronenberg – a master of the body horror genre – managed the transition with the 1991 Peter Weller-starring feature.
But, as previously reported, Kuritzkes didn't have such a hard time adapting the novel for the screen.
"It's a pretty wild book, but the characters were there, and the story was there, and the point of view was there, the voice was there," the scribe told IndieWire recently. "And so it was a process of the meeting place between Burroughs' voice and his point of view, and my voice and my point of view, and then Luca's voice and his point of view, and trying to hold all that."
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
