VENICE, Italy— Venice Film Festival regular Luca Guadagnino is back on the Lido to debut his new Daniel Craig film “Queer” on Tuesday night.
A festival favorite, Guadagnino had to forgo a splashy red carpet premiere for the sexy tennis drama “Challengers” last year, when the studio delayed its release amid the actors strike. But the filmmaker is returning with another highly anticipated project, adapting a William S. Burroughs novel about an American expat in Mexico City in 1950 who develops an obsession with a young, male student.
“Challengers” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes wrote the script for “Queer,” adapting a novel that was written in the 1950s but not published until 1985. It’s a story that others have tried to adapt over the years, including Steve Buscemi and Oren Moverman.
“‘How can a man who sees and feels be other than sad?’ William Burroughs asks in the last entry of his personal diary before his death,” Guadagnino wrote in his director’s statement. “In adapting his second novel, published almost 40 years after he wrote it, we have tried to respond to this humble appeal of the great iconoclast of the beat generation.”
Craig, in a performance Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera has called “career defining” stars alongside Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman in the film, which is playing in the main competition. A24 also recently acquired “Queer” for theatrical distribution.
