Luca Guadagnino is always on the hunt for new ways to express seduction onscreen. In Call Me by Your Name, the director had Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer swapping names to grow closer to each other. In Challengers, Guadagnino played out the love and hate among three tennis stars on the court. But in Queer, his upcoming film with former James Bond Daniel Craig and Outer Banks actor Drew Starkey, he switches up the formula. In the new trailer, Craig’s character, William Lee, whispers to Starkey’s Eugene Allerton that he wants “to talk to you...without speaking.”
Queer is based on the unfinished novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs. William Lee is a stand-in for Burroughs himself, who spends the 1950s in Mexico City dependent on heroin and one-night stands. He eventually meets former GI Eugene Allerton, and the two strike up a connection. Lee then convinces Allerton to join him on a trip throughout South America in search of ayahuasca—which he believes will finally unlock his mind and provide the answers to life that he’s searching for.
“It was a wise old queen who taught me that I had a duty to live, to conquer hate with knowledge and sincerity and love,” Craig says in Queer’s first trailer. “The difficulty is to convince someone else he is really part of you.”
The film also features Jason Schwartzman (Between the Temples), Lesley Manville (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris), David Lowery (The Green Knight), and singer Omar Apollo. Challengers scribe Justin Kuritzkes penned the adaptation, which premiered to positive reviews from critics at film festivals in Venice, Toronto, and New York. Queer opens in limited theaters on November 27.
“I was fascinated by the writing of Burroughs,” Guadagnino said at an event at the New York Film Festival. “In fact, after I read Queer and I discovered Burroughs, I went through all of his canon in the years afterward. But probably the thing that really was fascinating to me...was that this is a very profound love story.”
