By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

It’s been quite the year for director Luca Guadagnino who helmed 2 of the hottest films of 2024 with this following tennis love match Challengers.

• Read on for reasons including how former Bond Craig has succeeded in shaking off the baggage associated with that iconic role with this slow burn hit

Both were written by Justin Kuritzkes whose wife Celine Song was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Past Lives, our film of 2023.

In fact Guadagnino bought Kuritzkes a copy of the 1985 William S Burroughs novella Queer this screenplay is based on while they were on set filming Challengers in Boston in April 2022.

Former 007 Craig plays American expatriate William Lee who lives in 1950s Mexico City who leads a lonely life of 1-night stands with younger men until becoming infatuated with Starkey’s GI Eugene Allerton who he invites to accompany him to South America to try to find yagé, a plant said to offer telepathic abilities to those who consume it.

It’s only really in its latter stages when the couple arrive in Quito to meet Lesley Manville’s (Oedipus, Wyndhams Theatre) eccentric Dr Cotter and her husband, who creates ayahusca for them by brewing the yagé found in the forest, that things start to liven up.

The 2 men experience vivid hallucinations from the drug and communicate telepathically as their bodies meld.

Manville has previously been nominated for an Oscar for her role in film Phantom Thread and we wouldn’t be surprised if she received a similar nod for work rendering her almost entirely unrecognisable here.

Craig is good as the lonely, ageing queer whose drug addiction needles his interest in a closer bond with the younger men he lusts after who quickly tire of his company.

We didn’t find the sex scenes in Queer as outrageous as the marketing had promised but it is a dark film that looks ravishing. Starkey gives an assured performance and former Bond Craig has succeeded in shaking off the baggage associated with that iconic role with this slow burn hit.

It’s filmmaker Guadagnino however who is at his most interesting here and we can’t wait to see what he works on next.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Queers Tickets
• Have you seen a Daniel Craig film before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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