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)
