Daniel Craig in Luca Guadagnino's Psychedelic Gay Odyssey

The experimental jazz style of the Beat Generation writers made their work notoriously difficult to adapt for the screen. Walter Salles' On the roadRob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman Screams and by David Cronenberg Naked Lunch tried with varying degrees of success. The underrated John Krokidas Kill your loved ones arguably he came closest to capturing the rebellious energy of the literary movement by tracing a formative episode in the lives of the writers themselves. In QueerLuca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the elusive terms of the iconoclast and the result is mesmerizing.

Working again with Justin Kuritzkes, his screenwriter ChallengersGuadagnino paints an evocative picture of ex-pat ennui in postwar Mexico City, laying the groundwork for a romance grounded in realism before morphing into fantasy as the narrative becomes a druggy mosaic. The film was acquired ahead of its Venice premiere by A24, which is planning a release later this year.

Written in the early 1950s, while Burroughs was awaiting trial for the alleged accidental murder of his common-law wife Joan Vollmer, but not published until 1985, the novel is virtually autobiographical, given its faithfulness to events recounted in the author's diaries and letters.

The book is set exactly between Junkie AND Naked Lunch in recounting the opioid addiction experiences of Burroughs' alter ego, William Lee. But Queer It is perhaps the most revealing of the three books about the writer himself, describing Lee's crumbling, possessed by corrosive desire and need. The object of that obsession is Eugene Allerton, a fresh-faced American ex-military man inspired by Adelbert Lewis Marker, who was 21 when he and Burroughs met.

It’s hard to think of a more ideal director than Guadagnino to explore queerness, sensuality, and the shifting terrain of romantic intoxication, and he’s found the perfect traveling companion in Daniel Craig. In a rousing performance that balances colorful affectation with raw hunger, the actor makes Lee a magnetic storyteller whose shield of worldly composure falls away when Eugene (Drew Starkey) slips from his grasp, leaving him a virtual ghost by the film’s end.

In Mexico City, escaping heroin possession charges in the United States, Lee indulges his drug habit with whatever he can find, while trying to write but, more often, spending his time walking the streets, drinking in an atmosphere charged with brothels, cockfights and bars captured in granular panoramic splendor by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom.

Aside from some second unit shots, the film was shot entirely in Cinecittà, with sets built at the historic film studio in Rome.Queer marks the second major film this year to recreate Mexico on European soundstages, after Jacques Audiard Emilia Perez)

Lee is a regular at the Ship Ahoy bar, floating among the queer American expat community, but apparently maintains a true friendship only with Joe, who is unwilling to give up his taste for hard trading for something as trivial as being mugged or robbed. Played by an unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman, Joe could almost be a surrogate for Allen Ginsberg, spinning hilarious, low-key tales of his sexual escapades. When a fling with a cop turns sour and he discovers “The Gringo Puto” scrawled on an outside wall of his house, he shrugs, “I left it there. It pays to advertise.”

Lee plays his share of games, both American and Mexican, but when the tall, bespectacled Eugene catches his eye on the street, he is enchanted. At first, their flirtatious glances are a game of cat and mouse. Lee fails in his first attempts to connect, but Eugene gradually begins to fraternize with him in the bars.

They go to the cinema to see Cocteau Orpheuswhere Guadagnino finds a beautiful visual translation for Burroughs's description of Lee imagining himself caressing and kissing Eugene, with “ectoplasmic fingers” and “phantom thumbs.” A moving image taken directly from the novel also follows, as Lee in his mind approaches the young man, appearing “curiously ghostly, as if you could see right through his face.”

While the connection eventually extends to the physical, it is more a matter of Lee servicing Eugene and Eugene surprising him by reciprocating, albeit with impersonal detachment. While Eugene is bisexual enough to express interest in gay bars around town, there is no indication that he has had sex with men before, or that he enjoys it. But Lee perseveres, convincing Eugene to accompany him to South America, covering all costs and bargaining for intimacy once or twice a week.

Burroughs purists may scoff, but it lends credibility and warmth to the trajectory of this transactional relationship that Guadagnino and Kuritzkes have smoothed out some of Lee’s more abrasive aspects in the novel, such as his patronizing attitudes toward Mexicans. Craig appears both scruffy and dapper, louche and jaunty in his linen suits and fedora. You can understand a young man being dazzled by Lee’s “routines,” savory anecdotes filled with seductive conversational flourishes.

While Craig makes this chatty side of the character highly entertaining, he is also superb at showing Lee’s unusual self-exposure, his yearning for human contact increasing his vulnerability as his dependence on Eugene becomes chronic. With a new and enlightening self-knowledge comes a crippling weakness, something Craig fully conveys in a courageous performance that covers a broad psychological and emotional spectrum.

Once they leave Mexico, drug withdrawal leaves Lee weak and shaking, clutching at every faint sign that Eugene cares about him. Playing a reserved character, Starkey skillfully maintains an air of mystery around this question, though he never risks coming across as a mere user. Although he is ambivalent about sex, his irritation is tempered by compassion for the hopelessly wasted Lee. The actor sizzles quietly in the high-waisted pants and knit shirts of the era; Eugene wears his college wardrobe with a natural panache he seems unaware of.

The purpose of the trip to South America is to find a plant-derived hallucinogen called yagémore commonly known as ayahuasca, which Lee believes can unleash powers of telepathic divination. This takes them into the Ecuadorian jungle to meet the wildly eccentric and wispy-haired American botanist Dr. Cotter, who lives in a cabin with her younger male companion (Argentine director Lisandro Alonso) and a sloth. (Another of Guadagnino’s contemporary filmmakers, David Lowery, appears earlier as one of Lee’s bar acquaintances.)

The botanist is played to perfection by Lesley Manville (also unrecognizable), wild and ferocious, who carries a gun for fear that someone will try to steal her precious research material. Lee assures her in his disarming way that they only want to taste the drink, which she senses is a mirror, not a portal to another place.

Psychedelic trip scenes in movies often tend to be awkward. But Guadagnino knows what he's doing, assembling elements of body horror that recall his Sighs remake: if you want to see two men literally vomit their hearts out, you've come to the right place: with an almost balletic union between Lee and Eugene, as spiritual as it is carnal.

Cotter encourages them to stay and see where more drugs might take them, but they refuse. As they leave, he tells Eugene, “The door's already open. You can't close it.” Those cryptic words hang in the air of an eerie epilogue with Lee back in Mexico City two years later, as images of Eugene in his head intertwine with Burroughs's traumatic history with Vollmer.

This is Guadagnino’s fourth collaboration with the talented Thai cinematographer Mukdeeprom; it’s intoxicating and beautiful, finding a dreamy visual poetry even in the vulgarity and squalor. The air seems pervaded by palpable tensions of both sensuality and desolation. The period production and costume design (Stefano Baisi and Jonathan Anderson, respectively) are clearly meticulously curated, but they have a lived-in feel that gives the film as much grit as it does elegance.

After their pounding beats have given energy ChallengersTrent Reznor and Atticus Ross shift gears with a melancholy-drenched score, shaping the mood alongside bracing bursts of non-period tunes by New Order, Nirvana, Sinéad O’Connor, and Prince, among others. Those bold choices are typical of Guadagnino’s sure-handedness throughout this strange, beguiling film, fueled by tenderness, loneliness, lust, and swooning unrequited love.