Daniel Craig does career-best work in Luca Guadagnino’s deeply surreal LGBTQ drama

I have not read the novel by William S. Burroughs funny is adapted from, but if you told me that Luca Guadagnino drew it up and started from scratch, I’d believe you. His latest film seems to me in clear conversation with his previous work, As if the sensibilities of his four previous features were combined into one movie. It’s an enigmatic experience that I desperately want to spend this space interpreting. But I will refrain from going into too much detail and just offer the lens I saw it through.

In 1950s Mexico City, American expat William Lee (Daniel Craig) cruises for young men to sleep with. There’s a way to woo a willing partner, and for Lee, that means keeping verbal communication to a minimum. When he talks, like with the freckled Jewish boy in the opening scene, it doesn’t go too well. But we see, as it seems, when he succeeds, and his reaching for a man’s necklace with hostile curiosity is met with a hand that slides up his thigh.

Daniel Craig does some career-best work in Queer

The real theme of the movie is buried in his performance

This makes fellow American Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) particularly uncomfortable. Their eyes meet across, ahem, a cock, and they seem to connect. When they talk, things are friendly, even flirty. But he seems pretty friendly with another woman, too. Not knowing seems painful for Lee. His desires manifest physically as a kind of desperationAlmost like a disease. Joe (Jason Schwartzman), Lee’s friend and brother-in-arms of sorts, reminds him that he can always AskBut that would seem to destroy what he is really after.

Form and content are subtly in step in the early scenes. While daylight is stark and demystifying, the world around the characters becomes a little unreal at night, tinted with dreamy blues and violets. Our attunement to the physical body is also heightened, in classic Guadagnino fashion. Starkey is almost always artfully composed, but Craig alternates from suave and collected to a sweaty mess with sunken eyes. The more Lee strikes out, the worse he looks, but the healing intimacy of a successful evening bleeds over into the cinematography.

to step into the realm of meaning, The oscillation in Lee’s physical state is crucial to understanding his relationship with his homosexuality. He struggles with drug use, but this is less a direct explanation of his behavior than a way to get us to conflate queerness and addiction, as I believe the character does. Although Lee seems to live openly, courses with self-deprecation under Craig’s performance (among his best), occasionally picking up on dialogue. And something about Gene makes him the ultimate fixer.

Queer gets more and more surreal as it goes

Including the trippest pictures of Luca Guadagnino’s career

He mentions, first in passing, what he read about a drug called Yage, discovered in the South American rain forest. It seems that the natural telepathic ability is widespread; The Soviets tried it in mind control experiments. Lee’s interest in hunting becomes an increasingly important part of funnyAlthough exactly what he is after it is, for a long time, unclear. He would like a stronger hold on Gene, who is capricious with his attention. Would telepathy help him do that? Would mind control?

Guadagnino makes this a subject of mutual interpretation. When pursuit becomes a greater focus, funny Leans towards surreal imagery, specifically through dreams. The images the film conjures are among the most striking of the director’s filmography, often channeling the visceral physicality of Suspiria And Bones and all. In the dreams are the keys to Lee’s psyche, and I would recommend doing the work of unpacking them early, if only to flex the muscle. You will need it warmed up by the time funny comes to an end.

I greatly admire what Guadagino and his collaborators have accomplished with this film. It’s as rewarding as it is challenging; It is possible that with time, I will come to like it even more. I believe it is ultimately about self-acceptance, or, more accurately, the transcendence of self-denial. That’s not the only reading though, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what shapes up funny Takes when others do the work of untingling it.

funny Premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film is 135 minutes long and not yet rated.