Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, is a much-anticipated fall title that will no doubt rile up some viewers. It’s all but set to have its world premiere at the 81st Venice Film Festival.
Clocking in at 3 hours, “Queer” is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1953 novel of the same name, a story so filled with homosexuality that it was deemed too controversial at the time to be released and went unpublished for close to 30 years, until 1985.
In a new interview with Cinecitta, Guadagnino talks about “Queer” and confirms that the sex scenes he shot are “numerous and quite scandalous.”
"Queer” will be my most personal film. It's an homage to Powell and Pressburger. I've seen The Red Shoes at least 50 times and I think they'd appreciate the sex scenes of “Queer,” which are numerous and quite scandalous.
Powell and Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes” wouldn’t be the first thing that pops into mind when thinking of Burroughs’ seminal work. As for the sex scenes, Guadagnino hasn’t really given us any since Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer (and the peach) in 2017’s “Call Me By Your Name.”
“Queer” was loosely inspired by Burroughs’ own life, and his time spent in Mexico, surviving on the subsidies handed out by the US government following World War II, not to mention his struggles and dependence on heroin.
In the meantime, Guadagnino is set to start production on his next film, “After the Hunt,” on July 8. He describes the film, which stars Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, as a “tribute to Woody Allen's Bergman cinema."
Guadagnino adds that he’s currently working on four projects, I would venture to guess that they are, “After the Hunt,” “Separate Rooms,” ”Lord of the Flies” and a Bernardo Bertolucci documentary.
The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that.