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Daniel Craig’s latest movie Queer, by acclaimed director Luca Guadagnino, has received rave reviews from critics following its premiere at the Venice film festival on Tuesday.
The movie, which is an adaptation of William S Burroughs’ second novel of the same name, sees Craig play William Lee, an ex-pat living in Mexico City, who gets by on part-time jobs and army benefits.
Craig, who has also turned heads recently for his new haircut for the third Knives Out film, soon becomes obsessed with a young man, played by Drew Starkey, who he decides to pursue.
Much like some of Guadagnino’s previous movies, such as Call Me By Your Name and Challengers, Queer does not shy away from its character’s sexual desires but unlike those movies is reportedly more explicit than ever, which according to Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times generated audible discomfort from those watching in Venice.
In a rave review for Indie Wire, Ryan Lattanzio described two of the film’s sex scenes as “feverishly charged” and “the most explicit gay sex scenes I can remember in any mainstream movie”.
David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter, praised Craig for a “transfixing performance that balances colourful affectation with raw hunger.” Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also highlighted that the sexual encounters seen in the film “are about as graphic as modern male movie stardom allows”.
Craig’s turn was also commended by The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw who described a pistol carried around by the actor in the film as “a droll phallic symbol for this erotic cowboy who is very much a lover, not a fighter.”
Speaking about the movie at the film festival, Craig said: “There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,” adding: “We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could. Drew is a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with and we kind of had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.”
During the press conference, Guadagnino was forced to interject after a reporter asked about the sexuality of Craig’s most famous character, James Bond. The Italian director told everyone to “be adult in the room for a second” and reminded them “there’s no way anybody could know James Bond’s desires. The important thing is that he does his missions properly.”
Another of Craig’s co-stars in Queen, Omar Apollo, recently told Interview magazine that he lost weight in anticipation of a sex scene with the British star. “I had to get on the soup diet,” said Apollo. “Luca did not tell me to lose weight, but when you’re about to have a sex scene with Daniel Craig, you’re like, ‘Oh, dude, I can’t be looking off.’ I was at 200 pounds because I’m six-five.”
