Granted, the bar’s set pretty low, but Luca Guadagino’s latest (his second major release of the year) must be the best William S. Burroughs adaptation yet made. Taken from a late novella (Justin Kuritzkes scripts, following his debut on CHALLENGERS/’24, also for Guadagnino), the first half is set in a gay-friendly Mexico City nab for Stateside ex-pats in the late 1940s. Though it’s more specifically set within the even smaller sui generis world of Burroughs fevered mind. He’s there to pursue his addictions: drugs, tobacco, alcohol, handsome young men. And Daniel Craig, solidly muscled considering the decades of heroin and all-nighters, makes a four-course meal out of the part. (No problem accepting Bond, James Bond, tangling in bed with guys, but seeing 007 with bad hair takes some getting used to!) Cruising for Mr. Right, he finds lanky, lush Drew Starkey, a journalist of some sort, currently involved with a red-head, a female red-head, but an eager gay lover when needed. The film takes a big turn at mid-point when William Lee (the Burroughs alter-ego) heads to uncharted jungle territory far South, hunting for an elusive drug rumored to have telepathic properties. Not quite the case; but a sort of HEART OF DARKNESS adventure brings in an alarming Leslie Manville as a researcher who knows the hallucinogenic effects of the plant. These relationships provide plenty of character and narrative drive for Guadagnino to work with. But he truly excels with simpler things, like those dark, painterly apartment & hotel interiors that all seem to have magically expressive blue-toned vistas thru the window. All in all, it’s a very impressive display of filmmaking legerdemain.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Craig took on the younger man role, a ‘rough trade’ type, to Derek Jacobi‘s masochistic Francis Bacon in his breakout film, LOVE IS THE DEVIL/’‘98. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/love-is-devil-1998.html
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