Daniel Craig’s latest film “Queer” trades in his suave 007 reputation for the loneliness and pain of a drug-addicted gay man in a love story based on William Burroughs’ novel.
The love story between two men carries a “emotional thump” with graphic s*x scenes and emotional highs and lows, Craig said ahead of the film’s global premiere Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival.
The picture, directed by Luca Guadagnino of Italy, is one of 21 vying for the famous festival’s top Golden Lion award, which will be presented on September 7.
“‘Queer’ is this emotional thump, a tiny book but an emotional thump,” Craig told a press conference.
“It is about love, it’s about loss, it’s about loneliness, it’s about yearning, it’s about all of these things,” he said.
The film centres on Craig as William Lee, an ageing writer in 1940s Mexico City who spends his time drinking and picking up men before becoming infatuated with the much younger Eugene Allerton, played by Drew Starkey.
“If I was writing myself a part and wanted to tick off the things I wanted to do, this would fulfil all of them,” Craig told journalists.
As an actor, Craig is no stranger to sex scenes, having played ladies man James Bond five times.
For “Queer”, the actor said he strove to make those scenes as natural and poignant as possible, rehearsing for months ahead of shooting 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 said.
“We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could,” he said.
“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.”
Too close to home
Beat Generation novelist Burroughs — who explored themes such as sexuality and drug addiction in his experimental works — wrote “Queer” in the early 50s, but shelved it before finally being convinced to publish it in 1985.
“There was a very strong element of modesty in Burroughs,” said 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 said 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 said.
According to Guadagnino, whose tennis drama “Challengers” with Zendaya was screened out of competition to begin the festival last year, Craig added a “fragility” to the portrayal of the unhappy Lee.
The director described it as the “ability to be very mortal on screen” and stated that “very few iconic legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen.”
The Franco-American actor Timothee Chalamet, who played a teenage cannibal on a gory road trip across the United States in Guadagnino’s film “Bones and All,” rose to prominence in the director’s 2017 feature “Call Me by Your Name.”
Guadagnino won the Silver Lion at Venice for his direction in that picture.