NEW YORK (AP) â is sitting in the restaurant of the Carlyle Hotel talking about how easy it can be to close yourself off to new experiences.
âWe get older and maybe out of fear, we want to control the way we are in our lives. And I think itâs sort of the enemy of art,â Craig says. âYou have to push against it. Whether you have success or not is irrelevant, but you have to try to push against it.â
Craig, relaxed and unshaven, has the look of someone who has freed himself of a too snug tuxedo. Part of the abiding tension of was this evident wrestling with the constraints that came along with it. Any such strains, though, would seem now to be completely out the window.
Since exiting that role, Craig, 56, has seemed eager to push himself in new directions. He performed . His drawling detective Benoit Blanc (âHalle Berry!â) stole the show in And now, Craig gives arguably his most transformative performance as the William S. Burroughs avatar Lee in Luca Guadagninoâs tender tale of love and longing in postwar Mexico City, âQueer.â
Since the movieâs itâs been one of the fallâs most talked about performances â for its explicit sex scenes, for its vulnerability and for its extremely un-007-ness.
âThe role, they say, must have been a challenge or âYouâre so brave to do this,ââ Craig said in a recent interview alongside Guadagnino. âI kind of go, âEh, not really.â Itâs why I get up in the morning.â
In âQueer,â which A24 release Wednesday in theaters, Craig again plays a well-traveled, sharply dressed, cocktail-drinking man. But the similarities with his most famous role stop there. Lee is an American expat living in 1950s Mexico City where he, in sweaty, rumpled linen suits, cruises for younger men while juggling an increasingly debilitating drug habit. (No matter what youâve heard, the most truly unexpected sight in âQueerâ is Daniel Craig as an awkward suitor.)
Lee, though, is thunderstruck with infatuation for a poised and prim young man named Allerton (Drew Starkey). The film, adapted by âChallengersâ screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, proceeds as a love story but also as a profound romantic mystery.
Allerton is enigmatic and aloof, and itâs unclear how much heâs embraced his homosexuality. Their evolving relationship is a constant confusion to Lee. âQueerâ becomes consumed not just with the question of their unsettled love, but of the tantalizing possibilities of liberation and the painful, long-term sacrifices of repression.
The film, classically filmed on soundstages in Romeâs CinecittĂ , is populated with expansive windows and doorways that seem to ask: What doors to yourself, or to life, are you willing to walk through?
âMaybe another portal is his open chest. He just goes, âPlease come in, come in,ââ says Craig. âIt applies to art. It applies to everything. Letting one's self go. If you donât do it, how can you ever know? That tragedy of not doing that is greater than the embarrassment of doing it. Weâre defined by those moments in our lives.â
âI just recognized so many things within himâ
âQueerâ could be such a defining moment for Craig. For his performance, heâs widely expected to land his first Oscar nomination. For Guadagnino, making âQueerâ is especially long in coming. He first read the book â written in the early â50s but, by Burroughsâ own wishes, not published until 1985 â when he was 17.
For years, Guadagnino, the Italian filmmaker of and contemplated âQueerâ as a movie; he even once drafted his own script. In Lee, he saw a poetic figure.
âIâm really interested in the repression of others,â Guadagnino says. âI realize many, many times I go back to the theme. The idea of being so vulnerable and ready to be. He doesnât have a sense of pride or a protection of social codes.â
While they were making âCłóČč±ô±ô±đČÔČ”±đ°ùČő,â released earlier this year, Guadagnino approached Kuritzkes about adapting Burroughsâ novel. There were considerable hurdles. Burroughs never completely finished the novel, so the filmmakers resolved to finish it for him, writing into the movie an extended third-act ayahuasca trip. But adapting âQueerâ also meant leaving room for its unspoken spaces.
âThere is so much in the movie that is about the way Lee looks at Allerton and the way Allerton looks at him, and looks away,â says Kuritzkes. âA lot of that stuff is in the book, but when youâre making the movie, you realize the way Danielâs face registers Drewâs face tells you what would be communicated in 15 pages of prose.â
âOpen to play'
Guadagnino, convinced Craig was right for the role, approached the actor with the script. In Craig, Guadagnino saw someone, he says, who was âopen to play.â Within days, Craig, long an admirer of Guadagninoâs films, was in.
âI just recognized so many things within him,â Craig says. âSomeone who is both repressed and open, and the complicated relationship with love.â
Though it inverts the presentation of masculinity many associate with Craig, Lee of âQueerâ is more in line with some of the actorâs earlier work, like 1998âs âLove Is the Devil.â Itâs worth noting, too, that Craig's other major post-Bond movie role, Benoit Blanc, is also gay. (Hugh Grant plays his subtly suggested partner.)
For âQueer,â there was extensive preparation, on accent and movement and Burroughsâ own tortured history. But after months of research, the characterization only really emerged once shooting began.
âI canât tell you how nervous I was. It was terrifying,â Craig says. âBut something clicked that day, the first day. And Luca said, âThatâs it.â I was very nervous to try to expose it, but it became a kind of unfolding of the character. I kind of introduced myself to him.â
âI think Daniel loves the camera in a way that is intimate,â adds Guadagnino. âBecause he knows the camera cannot lie and you canât lie to the camera. The love you feel from the camera, to me, is not the love of vanity. Itâs the love of recording the truth.â
Starkey, the 31-year-old âOuter Banksâ actor, was met with the very different challenge of playing a character with few words on the page and a cryptic presence. He theorized that Allerton is in retreat because itâs âas if youâve lived your whole life and never seen your own reflection, and someone puts a mirror in front of your face.â
âA question I asked early on was: Is Allerton aware of the game that heâs playing? Is he aware that he may have some power over Lee, and does he like it?â says Starkey. âLucaâs answer to that was: âThatâs a very good question.ââ
Sex scenes in âQueerâ and the âsalaciousâ response
When âQueerâ premiered in Venice, much of the reception focused on the filmâs steamy sex scenes with Craig and Starkey. Guadagnino laments the temptation of the press to be âsalacious.â
âThey canât help themselves,â he says. âBut we are practical people. People make love. People laugh. People sleep. People inject heroin."
âOur job is only to make that as truthful as possible, and not shy away from it, not be coy about it,â adds Craig.
âAnd can we just clear the table forever? When we were shooting the sex scenes it was so funny,â says Guadagnino. âWe had fun. It was fun, light and then, done, letâs move on to the next.â
As intimately as Craig and Starkey would be working together, they decided to let their relationship unfold naturally.
âWe didnât, like, grab coffee and have a list of ice-breakers or something,â Starkey says. âWe just started working. We jumped into movement rehearsals and that was a great way to learn how to be free with the other person. It never felt like there any walls up.â
Not having walls up was, in many ways, the abiding nature of âQueer.â And for Craig, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of his career. He and Guadagnino are already planning another film together.
âI donât have any grand plan for my career. Itâs been OK âtil now. Itâs been going along,â Craig says, with a grin. âThen something comes along like this and you find a group of people to have this wonderful experience with. It makes me go: I want to keep acting. I never wanted to give up, but if I could get this again, Iâd love to do it.â
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
