Drew C

Spoilers ahead! I love Guadagnino's work and was by no means expecting something following along from Call Me By Your Name, but I was hoping for the same level of thematic cohesiveness and unfortunately came away disappointed. Watching this film felt like eating a cake that you know would taste delicious if only it had 10 more minutes in the oven. While visually beautiful, I found the score and the song choices detracted from the time period and the tone instead of enhancing it. Hearing Nirvana's Come As You Are playing in 1950s Mexico City is a fun choice and I totally understand the subtext of including this song in the film but it shattered my immersion. The soundtrack by Reznor and Ross felt incongruent with the tone, once again, and although I adore their work it felt out of place here. There was nothing in the music and sound to enhance or create emotion, which I felt was truly needed as so much of the feeling between the two characters is suppressed and hidden. I might be wrong and will re-watch to check, but I'm not sure if I even picked up on specific character leitmotifs. The trip sequences and their horror-adjacent imagery did not feel cohesively woven into the narrative, with a lot of twists and turns that felt narratively a little unearned. I love shock imagery when it's done well and think it can be used for fantastic effect, and did not feel it fulfilled its potential in Queer. I see the Lynch influence but it didn't feel well incorporated in my opinion, nor did it make me feel much. I would have liked to see things foreshadowed and laced throughout - to use the imagery of the snake consuming itself in an infinity symbol is powerful, but underutilised. I felt myself looking for substance to back the style, and found I came up short. I predict some people will genuinely enjoy this and some may act like this movie is more well-executed than it actually is in order to try and look like a cinephile. There were many interesting parts of this film but in my opinion they failed to mesh well together - the music mismatched, the score creating an atmosphere of psycho-thriller dread that didn't seem to really fit, the dream sequences feeling random and premature, some really interesting pieces of imagery that unfortunately felt throwaway. On the one hand some of the imagery felt very on the nose but other dream sequences felt as if I was meant to understand the significance of a woman's disembodied naked torso spinning around in the air and that if I didn't, that was my problem. I liked how grotesque the jungle trip scene was, but it veered a little into pretentiousness in a way that made me long for it to be over. Sometimes I feel as if I'm watching a director languishing in a puddle of how great they think they are, instead of simply watching them be great, and I end up feeling embarrassed. This was one of those times. Daniel Craig's performance is incredible, and I wish Starkey was given more to play with. I understand the value of the object of affection coming across stoic and difficult to read, but Guadagnino has explored this type of character well before and I was hoping for a more sophisticated interpretation. Instead, it fell flat. I came away feeling indifferent and unsure what the film wanted me to feel, or even what it wanted to say.

Completely subjective, but I loved this very much. Twisted, strange, yearning, very beautifully shot. It felt like watching a sociopath fall in love for the first, last and only time. I understand this won't appeal to everyone, and I worry its 'shocking' moments (which were not particularly shocking to me) may capture people's attention too much and overshadow the rest of it. I think you have to be in the right frame of mind to watch it, and make up your own conclusions. Allusions to Plein Soleil are there, but this felt less about class and more about desire, rejection and 'othering.' 4 stars because some of the humour felt a bit out of place, to the point where it made me wonder "what is the intended tone here?" but I think that was part of the charm. The groundnote and what I truly enjoyed was how Oliver seemed to have his own version of twisted love for Felix, despite his lack of empathy. I felt like I was watching a broken, emotionally stunted person grapple with desire and the yearning to be in the pool of sunshine that someone like Felix casts. And then the real ensuing guilt after he snaps, envious and toxic and out of control, and destroys that pool of sunshine he loved so much. The final scene felt like a pyrrhic victory to me at least. An empty pantomime of happiness after getting what he seemed to really want, but it didn't ring as 'real' to me. Over a decade later all Oliver seemed to want to talk about was Felix, and how he 'didn't love him'. I think he definitely did.