LE MONDE'S OPINION - Not to be missed

In recent years, Italian director Luca Guadagnino has alternated between bright, sexy films (Call Me by Your Name, Challengers) and darker, more experimental projects (Suspiria, Bones and All), which are more divisive too. Queer, his latest feature film, falls into the second category. It is an adaptation of a novel by the American author William S. Burroughs, written as a sequel to the 1953 Junky but not published until 1985. The film is extremely faithful to its original material for the first two-thirds, then considerably expands on it in the final section, set in the heart of the Amazon.

But before reaching the forest, Queer opens in the bars of Mexico City. It's here that William Lee (Daniel Craig), an American writer and drug addict, hangs out with a few friends, homosexuals and expatriates like himself, getting drunk, remaking the world and looking for one-night stands. It's here, too, that he falls under the spell of Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey, the film's revelation), a compatriot he encounters in the street, whose sexual orientation he tries to uncover and whose favors he tries desperately to attract.

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