Luca Guadagnino, the fearlessly inventive director of Call Me by Your Name and Challengers, calls his new film Queer 'a story of unsynchronised love'. Adapted from a novella by Beat Generation hero William S Burroughs, it follows an awkward but sometimes tender romance that develops between two very different men in 1950s Mexico City. Swapping the sharp tailoring of Bond for a louche, loose-fitting Brooks Brothers suit, Daniel Craig plays William Lee, a lonely functioning drug addict based on Burroughs himself. When Lee first glimpses dashing young serviceman Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) – a head-rush moment Guadagnino soundtracks with an incongruous blast of Nirvana’s Come As You Are – he is immediately mesmerised.
Though Lee shows his feelings more easily and eventually offers Allerton a financial incentive to travel with him to Ecuador, he is no sugar daddy – at times, the younger man is the more proactive party. 'I do think Allerton is as in love with Lee as Lee is in love with Allerton,' Craig says, sitting next to Guadagnino in a Soho hotel room. 'Allerton just can't show it, but Lee is looking for responses [from him]. And the less Allerton gives him, the more Lee fucks it up. That mistake is fascinating to me because, you know, I've been there, done that. We've all done it.'
