Queer
Hours after I finished Queer I had a realisation: that love and queerness are shades of the same emotion. The emotions which Lee experiences in this film are intrinsically tied to his queerness but I think this film powerfully extracted the idea that what he goes through is not solely limited to queerness.
The idea of unrequited love may be more resonant for queer people, there’s added layers which don’t exist in hetero relationships, is the person who I like even queer, the opening up and exposing your queerness in the hopes that queerness is reciprocated, is the person comfortable in their queerness to be open to love.
The odd thing is while a lot of this specifically only happens for queers, is it not still universal this idea of finding somebody to love? Not knowing if somebody likes you in a romantic sense, hoping somebody will reciprocate love for you and that they’re available enough to love. I was blown away by how this had never occurred to me before, maybe this is so obvious to others but I truly found such profoundness in this film. It feels like the queerness was abstracted from Lee’s character and instead it was about finding love. Not to say the queerness is not a part of him but I was more invested in his idea of unsynchronised love.
Lee is simply the embodiment of loneliness, something I think is very hard to showcase authenticity on screen but I truly thought it was shown so beautifully and real. He has so many vices which are all attempts to fill this hole inside him, he’s constantly drinking, he’s dabbled with drugs, he uses sex casually and he has this obsession to find this drug which is a manifestation of his inability to find anybody in his life who truly understands him. He’s went through life without a single meaningful relationship, is this made apparent in the film? No, but I think it’s overtly obvious through Lee’s desperation to find a real meaningful partner.
The character of Lee is only made as interesting as he is through Craig’s magnetism in drawing you into this man’s life. It’s a wonderfully nuanced performance which is so layered and complicated but perfectly gets across who this man is. The awkward embarrassing moments feel so natural as he attempts to court this man who he believes likes him. The raw and harrowing melancholy that graces his character when he’s alone. He feels well realised and authentic in a short period of time you understand who Lee is.
While not as straight forward as Lee’s character to understand, I think Starkey’s Alderton is equally as interesting. His performance is really quite strange, it’s reserved, we never really see the pair of them connect - until we do - and it feels like there’s an active choice being made to keep your distance from him. I don’t doubt that this was fully intentional, he becomes this elusive character who you are trying to figure out, much like Lee is also trying to understand him. I do think though there is a very subtle performance happening where it is clear what’s going on and it all kind of clicks when he has this talk with Leslie Manville at the end - which is phenomenal!
I love how versatile Luca’s filmography is and I really appreciated this foray into surrealism, I honestly think this is quite a nice introduction to surrealism as well. The ghostly touches just enhancing the feelings of longing, the almost lynchian ending - which again not hard to understand but just exemplified themes in a beautiful way and the gorgeous drug sequence. I don’t know if I’ve seen love portrayed in such a hauntingly beautiful way before, the feeling of wanting someone so bad you no longer want their touch but to feel them from the inside.
Shocking that Luca has managed to put out a pair of the best films this year but he seems to have hit a magic streak with his crew of Kuritzkes, Renzor and Ross and Mukdeeprom who all are phenomenal here as usual. It’s so cool to see just how different this is from their previous film as well