If you havenโt read the book, you canโt comment on this film. This film was made for fans of the works of William S. Burroughs, a queer author, and if you havenโt read the book youโre going to have very little appreciation for this film. This film is not meant to be representative of the queer community. It is an adaptation of the character portrait, transgressive semiautobiographical novel, โQueer,โ which is a sequel to Burroughโs first book, โJunkie.โ Queer was written in the 1950s, and itโs meant to be representative of *his* life, not the entire queer community.
If youโre expecting it to be a film written for queer people, thatโs not what this film is and you should look elsewhere. This film, like the novel, is a surrealist masterpiece and is very true to the novel. It truly captures the Beat writerโs persona as well as his delinear, symbolic narrative structure, psychedelic style of writing, his body horror, and his pure, desensitizing agony. The sound design is incredible - capturing, surreal, and at appropriate times, horrifying. The film is arthouse cinema, not Hollywood pandering. Guadagnino was the perfect director for this film. I saw influences from Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria in here, and even references to โNaked Lunch.โ Bravo. Iโd love to see an adaptation of โJunkieโ in the future.