Venezia 81 Picks: Luca Guadagnino's Visually and Narratively Queer Take on Repressed Eroticism.

After my, and I think the world’s, summer-long obsession with Challengers, I did not think Luca Guadagnino could possibly ever outdo himself, let alone do so in the same year. Following my viewing of his most recent cinematic effort, Queer, based on the 1985 novel by William S. Burroughs of the same name, I can say with great pride that I was proved totally wrong. Queer not only supersedes Challengers in terms of societal, narrative and conceptual gravity, but in my opinion, contains the most holistic depiction of homoeroticism (a topic Guadagnino does not shy away from) of his entire filmography. Easily the most sombre of his recent films, Queer brings to light the discomfiting and detrimental consequences that can arise from a restrained, or even, constrained exploration of one's own sexuality. Guadagnino is prompt to set forth his film’s thematic preoccupation through his astute casting of Daniel Craig as William Lee, the story’s protagonist. Most known for his fifteen year long commitment to the cunning and stoic James Bond, Craig, like William breaks out of his hyper-masculine shell, and ventures into unfamiliar territory in search for greater autonomy. 

Despite the seemingly progressive and accepting environment of the Mexican town William relocates to, an enduring sense of ambivalence still pervades the promiscuous and inquisitive community which populates it. Guadagnino lays out the foundations of William’s slightly bewildering milieu through the recurrent insertion of the word ‘queer’ in the film’s script. The term is used between the characters that populate Queer’s cinematic universe to confirm or deny others’ sexual orientation, however given its duality, its utterance can either be understood as the characters’ desire to appropriate and diminish its derogatory connotation or as a manifestation of their lingering discomfort with their sexuality. This sub-theme, or as I mentioned earlier, this consequence of repressed sexual urges, is optically expressed through the pastel coloured clothes that make up most of William’s wardrobe. The attenuated hues of his outfits serve to convey the subconscious subversion of his sexuality, which we later see evolve into a physical and emotional prepotency over the young Gene who is also adorned in the same colours given his unspecified sexual orientation. 

The already unsettling dynamic between William and Gene escalates in the second half of the film during which Gene follows William on his journey across South America in pursuit of a plant called Yage so as to exploit its telepathic properties. William’s perverse wish to share this psychic experience with Gene stems from his overwhelming infatuation with him, and tortured by Gene’s mixed signals and occasional animosity towards him, William goes to extremes in hopes of aligning the two emotionally and attempting to selfishly dictate Gene’s sexuality for him. Though this fixation with Gene seems to stem solely from intense physical attraction, Gene, given his aesthetic similarity to William may remind him of a younger version of himself with the only difference that unlike William, Gene is able to live his formative years as part of a more evolved and open minded society. William’s near-predatory behaviour towards Gene can be explained as a yearning to relive his youth in a more unapologetic and licentious manner, hence, William’s literal seepage into Gene’s skin during the film’s most engrossing and metaphorically charged scene. 

Guadagnino eventually concludes the film chronicling William’s final attempt at acquiring control over Gene’s life, by shooting him dead. William’s violent impulse is justified as being a product of misplaced and misunderstood frustration and the gun’s fixed role as a piece of phallic imagery attributes his turmoil to his undetermined sexual identity. Giving viewers a small taste of the looming uncertainty that followed both William and Gene throughout the course of their lives, as similarly to them, we leave the screening without having been able to draw definitive conclusions on the protagonists.