Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ Hits HBO Max Today (3/28)

HBO Max is adding Guadagnino’s latest feature length film, Queer, to their streaming library today.

The director of Call Me By Your Name and Challengers is known for exploring themes of sexual fluidity and discovery in his films, and as the name implies, Queer is no exception.

Based on the unfinished and semi-autobiographical novella by William S. Burroughs, the film earned Daniel Craig nominations for the Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as expat William Lee, a man combating loneliness in 1950’s Mexico by using travel, drugs, alcohol, and younger men as his coping mechanisms of choice.

Lee becomes enamored and obsessed with GI Eugene Allerton, with whom he begins a relationship, and departs with on a journey to South America in search of the yagé plant, known for possessing telepathic abilities.

The film delves into themes of psychedelics and the eternal struggle to connect physically and emotionally with another human being. Guadagnino doesn’t shy away from explicit sex scenes in this project, as compared to previous choices to pan-away when his lead characters consummate their relationship.

One notable scene, occurring within Lee’s dream sequence, mirrors the game of ‘William Tell’ in which Burroughs once claimed to have shot and killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, later admitting to investigators that his pistol fell and hit a table while showing it to friends, accidentally shooting Vollmer in the process.

Regardless of the actual truth, the surrounding myth weaves its way into the narrative, much like Lee’s experiences with Allerton haunt him long after the pair part ways, but what else would you expect from a queer story set in the 1950s except a tragic ending?