Luca Guadagnino's Queerpremiered at the Venice Film Festival this week, and we have every reason to be jealous of the lucky few who've already gotten to see it.
The film is an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel of the same name, penned by Challengers scribe Justin Kuritzkes. Set in Mexico City in the 1950s, it follows American ex-pat William Lee (Daniel Craig) as his life is shaken up by the arrival of a young student named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Queer also stars Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Andra Ursuta, Michael Borremans, David Lowery, and Omar Apollo. And, as of last week, A24 is on board to distribute the film, with hopes for a theatrical release by the end of the year.
While we wait for more information about exactly when those of us who aren't fortunate enough to hit up international film festivals might get to see Queer, let's take a journey through some of the things its cast and creative team have said that have us hyped up for its eventual release.
Stefania D'Alessandro/WireImage
"I think I love the idea of seeing people and not judging them, of making sure that even the worst person is the person that you identify with."
-Luca Guadagnino, Venice Film Festival press conference
"There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. There’s a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and real and as natural as we possibly could. Drew’s a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with. We kinda had a laugh. We tried to make it fun."
-Daniel Craig, Venice Film Festival press conference
Jacopo Raule/FilmMagic
"I had to get on the soup diet. 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."
-Omar Apollo, revealing he has a sex scene with Craig, Interview Magazine
"This is a movie about the fever dream of connection and disconnection. And the only way we can really communicate the depths of their connection, and the dramatic denial inhabiting them, is that you have to see their interaction. From the way they travel together; the way they drink together; the way they fuck together; to the way they are apart and together. It’s integral to this idea of connection and disconnection, or as Burroughs would say, disembodiment."
-Luca Guadagnino, Variety
"I felt like I was a medium between these two brilliant artists – Luca on the one hand and William S Burroughs on the other – and it was my job, really, to bring them together."
-Justin Kuritzkes, RadioTimes.com
Stefania D'Alessandro/WireImage
“When you’re rolling around on the floor the second day it’s a good way to get to know someone.”
-Drew Starkey, Venice Film Festival press conference
"I remember that we said, “What is unfinished, we want to try to finish.” And in doing that, we have to understand why it was unfinished and how Burroughs would have finished it."
-Luca Guadagnino on William S. Burroughs' original novel, Variety
MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images
"If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it. It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there."
-Daniel Craig, Venice Film Festival press conference
"It’s always exertion and breaths and groans. Just you in a booth alone doing that, you feel like you’re in an insane asylum."
-Drew Starkey on ADR for the film, Interview Magazine
aniele Venturelli/WireImage
"I want to leave the audience at the end of it with an idea of self – who are we when we are alone. Who are you when you are along in that bed, and you are left with the feeling of how you have felt for someone else."
-Luca Guadagnino, Venice Film Festival press conference
