In his new movie “Queer”, Daniel Craig sheds his suave 007 persona for the loneliness and anguish of a drug-addicted homosexual man, in a love story primarily based on the William Burroughs novel.
Containing graphic intercourse scenes and emotional highs and lows, the love story between two males packs an “emotional thump”, Craig stated forward of the film’s world premiere Tuesday on the Venice Film Festival.
The movie, directed by Italy’s Luca Guadagnino, is certainly one of 21 vying for the highest Golden Lion prize on the prestigious pageant, which will probably be awarded September 7.
On the crimson carpet forward of the screening, a shaggy-haired Craig seemed nothing just like the tuxedo-wearing undercover agent for whom he’s related, as a substitute choosing a cream-colored go well with paired with aviator sun shades.
Early opinions for the movie had been enthusiastic, with IndieWire praising Craig’s efficiency as “all inner torment he wears on the outside as a deeply lonely man doomed to an unrequited all-consuming love.”
“‘Queer’ is this emotional thump, a tiny book but an emotional thump,” Craig informed a press convention forward of the screening. “It is about love, it’s about loss, it’s about loneliness, it’s about yearning, it’s about all of these things.”
The movie facilities on Craig as William Lee, an getting older author in Nineteen Forties Mexico City who spends his time consuming and choosing up males earlier than turning into infatuated with the a lot youthful Eugene Allerton, performed by Drew Starkey.
“If I was writing myself a part and wanted to tick off the things I wanted to do, this would fulfill all of them,” Craig informed journalists.
As an actor, Craig is not any stranger to intercourse scenes, having performed girls’ man James Bond 5 instances.
Here, he strove to make these scenes as pure and poignant as potential, rehearsing for months forward of capturing with co-star Starkey.
“There is nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set — there’s a room full of people watching you,” Craig stated.
“We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could,” he stated. “We kind of had a laugh, we tried to make it fun.”
His co-star Starkey added: “When you’re rolling around on the floor with someone the second day of knowing each other, that’s a good way to get to know someone.”
Beat Generation novelist Burroughs — who explored themes equivalent to sexuality and drug dependancy in his experimental works — wrote “Queer” within the early 50s, however shelved it earlier than lastly being satisfied to publish it in 1985.
“There was a very strong element of modesty in Burroughs,” stated Guadagnino. “It was too close to home that book, he couldn’t even deal with that, he had to put it aside.”
But the director stated he was attracted by the “idea of seeing people and not judging them… Of making sure that even the worst person is the person you identify with.”
“It’s so purely profoundly human and that’s what should be the task of the filmmaker, to find humanity in the dark recesses and in the most bright ones,” he stated.
A dingy mattress opens the movie to the strains of Kurt Cobain singing “Everyone is gay”, a mattress plagued by manuscripts, eyeglasses, books, maps and a revolver.
“The Lees have always been perverts,” Lee tells Eugene, calling his personal homosexuality “a curse”.
Guadagnino’s Mexico City seems straight out of an Edward Hopper portray, with area and shadows highlighting Lee’s loneliness and desperation.
The movie enters one other drug-fueled dimension after the pair resolve to go to South America, in quest of a telepathy-inducing drug, “yage”, or ayahuasca that Lee hopes will make him nearer to Eugene.
Here, the movie ventures into “Heart of Darkness” territory, as the boys hunt down a distant camp run by a reclusive American scientist (Lesley Manville), researching the properties of the drug and setting a toxic snake upon intruders.
According to Guadagnino — whose tennis saga “Challengers” starring Zendaya was screened out of competitors final 12 months to open the pageant — Craig introduced a “fragility” to the position of the anguished Lee, including that “very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen”.
The director’s 2017 movie “Call Me by your Name” made a star of the Franco-American actor Timothee Chalamet, who performed a younger cannibal on a bloody highway journey throughout the United States in Guadagnino’s movie “Bones and All”.
That movie earned Guadagnino Venice’s Silver Lion directing prize.
© 2024 AFP