Queer's star plumbs new depths, Havoc falters outside action scenes

The story: William Lee (Daniel Craig) is an American in 1950s Mexico City, a lonely exile cruising gay bars until the day he sights a spiffy stranger new in town and becomes hopelessly besotted.

- Whang Yee Ling

QUEER (R21) 135 minutes, opens on May 1 ★★★★★

Do not think James Bond. Recall instead the 1998 British biopic Love Is The Devil, in which Craig played the seedy boy toy of infamous English artist Francis Bacon.

The Hollywood leading man started out as a raw character actor, and Queer by Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, 2017; Challengers, 2024) is an adaptation of Beat Generation countercultural icon William S. Burroughs' 1985 autobiographical novella that brings the actor full circle.

As William, a Burroughs surrogate, he is now the middle-aged dissolute in a tale of romantic obsession with a young former serviceman.

Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) is this Adonis, with the aloofness of someone aware of how good-looking he is. He is unreadable and may not even be queer.

William does get him into the sack. Still, he gets no closer to his beloved's heart.