Guadagnino is a true master of erotic desire

Queer, which is based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, is the latest film directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, Challengers) and stars Daniel Craig as an American expat who is gay, horny, sweaty, drug-addled and becomes infatuated with a younger man. It’s not exactly Christmassy, but it is very Burroughsy, and it may be the best performance of Craig’s career. I can’t think of any other actor who could have shaken off Bond in such a sexually daring way, not even Roger Moore.

Queer is Burroughs’s follow-up to his better-known Junkie and it’s a sad tale that is highly autobiographical, which makes it sadder yet. Burroughs’s alter-ego is William Lee (Craig), who lives among a community of gay expats who gathered in Mexico City in the early 1950s.

Lee wears an off-white linen suit that has seen better days and will see worse. He is boozy and predatory and promiscuous, touring the bars to pick up young men with whom he will retreat to one of those motels where the neon is bright and the one towel is thin and ragged.

He reeks of desperation but is handsome, in a gone-to-seed way, and is a good talker, so is never short of company. No one hides who they are here. A fellow barfly, Joe (a delightful Jason Schwartzman), keeps picking up men who steal from him. They pinch his watch, his boots, his radio. But he is open about it and has reconciled himself to it: ‘The trouble with me is I like the type who rob me.’ As with most of Burroughs, it would be funny if weren’t so sad.

Lee is a tragic case, and he could be repellent too if Craig didn’t make him so heartbreaking.