Venice Boss “Feels Bad" That ‘Queer' Was Trimmed by Over an Hour

My initial reporting that Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” had its original runtime drastically snipped down in the editing room turns out to actually be far worse than initially believed.

Venice Film Festival chief, Alberto Barbera, is now saying that the film was actually 3 hours 20 minutes, and that he preferred the lengthier version to the trimmed down one we’re going to be getting this fall.

I’ve seen two versions of the film, the one that will screen is the third, and shortest, it lasts 135 minutes. The first version was 200 minutes, the second was 150 minutes. It’s a sorry situation, I feel sorry that you won’t get to see the original cut, because I know exactly what Luca cut out: all of [Daniel] Craig's wanderings in the gay clubs of Mexico City, with this incredible fauna of gay life, in search of adventure.

Barbera goes on to state that he hopes the original cut does get screened one day, and that he’d love for it to premiere at Venice:

I hope that sooner or later Guadagnino will make the director's cut because there are beautiful things that you won’t get to see [..] I feel bad that “Queer” has been trimmed out because it was far from inessential to the story and the construction of the character.

Guadagnino just kept editing the film until the bitter end. When it was announced, Venice’s website had “Queer” at 185 minutes, then it was again updated to 152 minutes, and now it’s 135 minutes. Last month, I wondered if the shorter cut meant that Guadagnino was trying to make it more palatable for a wider audience. The film still has no U.S. distribution.

The result is that Guadagnino has now trimmed over an hour of the film. Maybe it’s time for social media to create #ReleaseTheGuadagninoCut.

For “Queer,” Guadagnino reconstructed Mexico City in Rome’s Cinecittá studios, and Barbera mentions how visually the film “is completely abstract” and “not realistic.” It certainly sounds, at the least the original version, as Guadagnino’s riskiest and boldest statement. We’ll see if it pays off next week, that’s when it premieres at Venice.

“Queer” wrapped production in July 2023. The film stars Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Omar Appolo, Henrique Zaga, Andres Duprat, Ariel Shulman, Drew Droege, Colin Bates, and filmmakers Lisandro Alonso, David Lowery, and Michael Borremans.