William S. Burroughs wrote this 206-page semi-autobiographical
novella in the early ‘50s, partly as a companion piece to Junkie and
partly as a warmup for Naked Lunch. But Hollywood shied away
from it until now, partly because its homoerotic nature was
considered too “obscene” for those times, and partly because no
director as gutsy as Luca Guadagnino was on the scene yet.
Lee is a mysterious American addict and alcoholic living in lonely
exile in Mexico City in the ‘50s, whiling away his days getting very,
very drunk, interacting with a few fellow loser expats and
shooting up. The first part of this flick is a devastatingly effective
portrait of a self-destructive man lost in abortive passion and
desperate for human connection. If Daniel Craig was looking for a
way to distance himself from his James Bond/action hero
typecasting, I’d say he found it in this soul- (and skin-) baring role.
Things seem to look up for Lee with the arrival in town of Gene
(Daan de Wit), a beautiful young man, sexually hetero but mostly
just apathetic. He accepts Lee’s advances but with frustrating
indifference and even annoyance. Lee persuades him to go with
him to South America in search of a powerful hallucinogenic
known as yage, and then things go psychedelically off the rails.
And this is where Luca Guadagnino shines. A genuine visionary if
somewhat erratic, he made the excellent Call Me by Your Name but
also the awful Suspiria. Once in the jungle, he drops the plot,
which would be a greater crime if there actually was a plot
instead of an admittedly brilliant character study. And buckle up!
Then it just ends. Burroughs never finished the book. This is a film
that will be appreciated more by critics and cineasts than general
audiences. Regardless of how surreal or off-topic a Guadagnino

film gets, though, it’s never less than visually riveting. And the
terrific, anachronistic soundtrack keeps things nicely off-kilter.
Audiences not on the director’s vibe and put off by the film’s
explicit eroticism may find it – what’s the word? — challenging. It’s
certainly not for the faint of heart, but as we regress steadily
toward 50s prurience these days, it’s as fulfilling as it is
rebellious. (137 min)