‘Queer’ Review — Luca Guadagnino delivers his second masterpiece in one year

A review of the new drama, in theaters November 27, 2024

Nobody does longing like Luca Guadagnino. He is our pre-eminent chronicler of desire, of looking, of what it feels like to stare at someone and long to reach out and touch them. He already delivered one such masterpiece this year in Challengers — a film all about the ways we desire one another, about the way bodies in space become vessels for wanting. Now, as the year draws to a close, he’s somehow done it again. Queer is an exceptional film, yet another transfixing meditation on what it’s like to be a body that wants. Furthermore, it’s a meditation on what it’s like to be a queer body that wants.

After an opening credits sequence showing a series of objects artfully arranged on a bedspread — a journal, a passport, eyeglasses, a cum-splattered shirt — Queer opens on a conversation between William Lee (Daniel Craig) and a younger Jewish man he’s interested in. As Lee ponders out loud whether the boy is queer, Guadagnino almost immediately replicates a shot directly out of his own Call Me By Your Name — a Star of David necklace nestled in an open shirt. However, unlike in Call Me By Your Name — where the shot signaled burgeoning desire — the Jewish boy reaches down and closes his shirt. He’s afraid…