Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig talk about ‘Queer’

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer is a wisp of smoke curling in the humid air, a film that aches with forbidden longing. Streaming on MUBI, the film is a languid dream, saturated with the yearning of a man who dares to desire—yet barely allows himself to reach.

This is Daniel Craig, his face weathered yet vulnerably luminous, his performance the hush of a confession. As Lee, Craig is hesitant but hopeful, out of place in his own skin, his body moving through the world as though apologising for its own needs. His gaze is heartbreakingly adolescent—furtive, searching, afraid of being caught yet desperate to be seen.

This is not Bond, the steely, assured figure of Craig’s past; this is something braver: a man allowing himself to want. Guadagnino lets the camera linger and the atmosphere swallow us. The sweat, the neon-drenched nights, the sunburnt loneliness of a foreign land—it seeps into the frame, enveloping us in Lee’s muted agony.

Over a video call, I spoke briefly with Guadagnino and Craig about Queer. Guadagnino: Thank you for the question. It’s very inspiring.

I think the book led us through the development of the story through the visuals, I would say. The first part of the book (by the great William Burroughs) is set in Mexico City. Then Lee convinces Allerton (his lover, played by Drew Starkey) to embark on a sort of picaresque quest through South America in search for ayahuasca.

Then they finally bump into this doctor, into this jungle in the heart, only to come back at the end in the epilogue in Mexico City. So I think that the structure came from the book and the texture of it came from the book. Craig: And it is all shot on a soundstage.