Frankly I have not been a fan of this director’s work, so I was not expecting much from Queer but I was knocked out by this film. I have read the novel and Lee is William Burroughs in the book but a side of Burroughs he did not show to everyone. I think it was wise that Craig didn’t play him so closely. He was more like a rough Tennessee Williams character than Burroughs. He is great in it. I also thought that the Allerton character was well cast. The film was not shoot in Mexico but on soundstages in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios and it does feel like a theatrical version of Mexico, very stagey and designed but I find that works well with the magical realism that peppers the story and ultimately the final act.
A spoiler here; Allerton plays hard to get and hard to read throughout the film, he declares he is not queer, but me thinks he protests too much. The drug scenes in the jungles of Ecuador reveal that he is indeed gay but will not face the facts. The brilliant Lesley Mansfield’s character basically tells him so when she asks him what he fears from his merging with Lee during their peyote like experience together. “You should have seen yourself” she said, and we find out that he disappears out the jungle and of Lee’s life with another older man.
I loved the ending and the way the real life tragedy of Burroughs life, his shooting of his wife, William Tell style is shown transposed to Allerton in a surreal sequence, and his death as an old man brings to an end a life of an unfulfilled seeker.