Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig talk about ‘Queer’
Summary
Luca Guadagnino, director of ‘Queer’, and actor Daniel Craig on body language, yearning, and developing story through the visuals
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.
While being set in Mexico City, ‘Queer’ almost feels like it could be shot on a soundstage. Everything is inside. Were you going for a literal interiority of character as well as location?
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.
Guadagnino: Everything, including the jungle.
Luca, you’ve adapted ‘Call Me By Your Name’, ‘Bones And All’ and now ‘Queer’. What is it about these books that called out to you?
Guadagnino: It’s unconscious, but eventually you realise that they all have this kind of common thread that unifies them. And I wasn’t searching for it. But you always have this characters that are somehow on the margin, that they are not fitting. They are somehow repressed. And they have to survive in a world of normativity, probably. But that’s always, again, unconscious. I don’t look for it.
One of the most mesmerising things about the film is Lee’s body language, the way he moves, not just to Nirvana’s Come As You Are, but also when wearing his hat. He has this odd grace, like an out-of-work magician. How much did you both work on that body language? And what was the brief that you shared?
Craig: Well, we didn’t, there was no brief. I mean, we worked very closely with two amazing choreographers, Sol Léon and Paul Lightfoot, primarily just to work on the ayahuasca sequence. That was a choreographed piece of work. But I think it would be right to say that all of that work paid into the physicality. It’s just the way I work. I mean, I pretended to be James Bond for a number of years. The way he walked was not the way I walk. And anybody would tell you that if you knew.
Guadagnino: But you know, the miracle of cinema is, speaking of the Nirvana sequence, how the cameraman and the key-grip started to get the riff of the movement, so that the travelling shot and your walk, they become this beautiful conversation.
Daniel, a lot of your romantic connection in the film is about saying volumes without saying anything. There’s a lot of yearning between your characters. How did you see that?
Craig: I think Mexico City in the 1950s was one of those places where people came looking for whatever, love, drugs, whatever, I don’t know, freedom. And so their connections with each other (Lee and Allerton’s) are out of sync. They’re just not on the same wavelength. They’re not on the same frequency.
And it doesn’t mean they don’t both want to fall in love with each other, or that they don’t desire each other. They both have really very strong feelings with each other. They’re just not able to communicate. And a lot of Lee’s journey is finding that ability to communicate, to talk to you without speaking, telepathy, all of those things.
When you see Lee looking at Allerton and the way he’s longing for him… In a way, more than a romantic partner, he seems to have fallen in love with youth itself. Is that part of the aching that you’ve put in the film, both of you?
Guadagnino: I think youth is overvalued.
Craig: Hmm. So do I. (Laughs)
Guadagnino: And we’re not bitter 50-somethings. It’s just that it’s very overvalued. It’s not youth per se that counts. It’s the eyes in the other or the mirror that they reflect, what they reflect. You know, psychoanalytically, you become whole in the gaze of the other. It has nothing to do with youth. It’s a beautiful, crazy misconception.
~
And then, like old lovers who share an inside joke, these two collaborators collapse into giggles. What could be more appropriate?
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
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