Daniel Craig is “heartbreaking” in this explicit gay romance, but the story goes off the rails

In Luca Guadagnino's latest film, the James Bond star is on exceptional form as a dissolute writer who enjoys casual sex and strong alcohol. He is undoubtedly the best thing about it.

As Luca Guadagnino's Call me by your name When Queer was released in 2017, the director was criticized for holding back on the sex scenes between the two male lovers. Even the film's screenwriter, James Ivory, argued that the naked bodies of Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer should be seen. “For me,” he said, “that's a more natural way of doing things than hiding them or doing what Luca did, which was panning the camera out the window at some trees.” Guadagnino obviously had these words in mind when he made Queer, which was released in Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, because when Daniel Craig goes to bed with a man, their connection is shown from the enthusiastic beginning to the explosive end. Those who enjoyed seeing Craig step out of the sea in swimming trunks in Casino Royale will be pleased.

Well, sort of. But it's fair to say that his character, William Lee, is a world away from the secret agent who made Craig a superstar, even if the two men share a penchant for casual sex and strong alcohol. Queer is based on William Burroughs' novel, published in 1985 but written in the 1950s as a fictionalized account of the author's own experiences. It begins in Mexico City, where the dissolute Lee, wearing a fedora, linen suit and a pistol on his belt, goes from bar to bar. While chugging tequila, he swaps gossip with his fellow Americans, including a beer-bellied writer played by Jason Schwartzman. He also eyes any man who might be willing to accompany him to his hotel room. One possible candidate is Gene (Drew Starkey), a fresh-faced, radiantly handsome photographer. Lee is smitten with the young Adonis from the first moment he sees him, and the fact that he can't tell whether Gene is gay or not only makes the stranger even more fascinating.

Craig is touchingly vulnerable in his role as a frustrated and exhausted bar-goer who knows he is no longer the man he once was, but who still has a spark of his old spirit. He loses all the confidence that James Bond And Benoit BlancCraig reminds us what an exceptional actor he is, and his heartbreaking performance is enough to sustain the sad anti-romance between two expats. But the Mexico City section, titled Chapter One, takes up only the first third of Queer. In Chapter Two, Lee and Gene go on a trip to South America, where Lee's heroin withdrawal reduces him to a quivering wreck. In Chapter Three, the pair make their way through an Ecuadorian jungle in search of a plant that might give them telepathic powers. This search leads them to a giggling, snake-smothering botanist – played by Lesley Manville, of all people – after which Queer takes a trippy turn into a body horror film reminiscent of Guadagnino's remake of Suspiria.

Given the unpredictability of that narrative, you can't say the film is boring, but it's not exactly gripping either. Burroughs' novel is beloved by fans for its unusually sincere and unselfconscious nature, and Guadagnino has said he wanted his film to be a “tender… universal love story.” And yet he and his screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, have created a series of eccentric, slightly funny vignettes that don't really connect to one another and feature various self-important characters we barely know. It's difficult to care. Craig's soul- and skin-baring turn aside, Queer is a proudly artificial oddity, from the anachronistic placement of Nirvana and Prince songs on the soundtrack to the use of studio sets that look like they were painted by Edward Hopper. As a result, the love story is nowhere near as poignant as that in Call Me By Your Name, let alone those in Guadagnino's more recent films. Bones and everything And challenger. It's also not as moving as the one in Casino Royale.