Queer Review [Video]

The idea of wrangling William S. Burroughs’s work into a filmable screenplay is a daunting one. Foundation of the Beat Generation, William Burroughs’s manic experimentations with prose and narrative form resulted in his legacy as a trailblazer of the postmodern novel. David Cronenberg’s unique body horror experimentations lifted Burroughs’s esoteric Naked Lunch from the page, but, ultimately, he struggled to combine his auteurship with Burroughs’s transgressive prose. However, with Queer, Luca Guadagnino silkily manages to entwine his style with the novel’s impenetrable sensibilities.

Queer, an autobiographical short novel by Burroughs, is a partial sequel to his earlier work, Junky. Burroughs wrote the novel after he fled the US following his accidental role in his wife’s death, placing the narrative around his unchecked experiences with heroin addiction. The film follows Burroughs’s literary alter ego William Lee, in Mexico City as he navigates his unquenchable sexuality, ravished junk addiction, and growing infatuation …