22/46
In Mexico City in the 1950s, an American immigrant in his forties lives a lonely life in a small American community. However, the arrival of a young student helps a man to finally establish a meaningful relationship with someone. Ultimately, it was Daniel Craig who convinced Luca Guadagnino to play Drew Starkey after watching the tapes of Guadagnino’s audition and telling him, “This is a friend.” seeing Starkey… William Lee: Sit on your ass! Or what was left of him after four years of service in the navy. Appeared on The Graham Norton Show: Daniel Craig/Nicola Coughlan/Jesse Eisenberg/Kieran Culkin/Flo (2024). I’ve never seen Naked Dinner (1991), but I often thought about it during the screening of Queer at the 2024 London Film Festival: perhaps this should have been expected, since William S. Burroughs provided the source material for both films. In the 1950s' Mexico City, William Lee, an American writer who was short of…forty? Fifty? He spends his days getting drunk, shooting and having casual sex with other men. One day, a muscular, intelligent young man named Eugene walks into the bar, and Lee is shocked. But what does Eugene himself want? Plus, there’s this telepathic drug to think about… I don’t quite understand what director Luca Guadagnino is trying to achieve stylistically with this film. The sets are done almost exclusively in bright colors — muted reds and olive greens, for example — and have that unrealistic, pure Technicolor color that made me think the intent was to pay homage to the films of the era in which the film is set. But if this is so, then why is the soundtrack clearly not in the style of rock and techno of the 50s? Daniel Craig (I think or is he starting to look like Sid James?) is stuck in the main role because he has to constantly carry nonsense. with an accent that clearly does not belong to him. Drew Starkey is capable of playing the manipulative Eugene more subtly and certainly looks prepared. Leslie Manville is unrecognizable in the role of a doctor living in the South American jungle – well done, makeup team! This is the type of film that, in my opinion, has more to do with the artistic style than with the narrative. It was nice to watch it once, but I don’t plan to watch it again.
