Set in Mexico in the early 1950s, Queer depicts the torrid affair between William Lee (an unexpected Daniel Craig) and Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), an American student. In the first part of the film, with several frontal and racy sexual scenes, the two men follow the movements of desire of a man who uses various drugs and is completely obsessed with a student who initially pulls the indifference card. In the second part of the film, the 2 men team up to explore the effects of a mysterious brew called ayahuasca.
Aesthetic qualities and stylistic extravagance aside, Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' novel of the same name, is a melancholic portrait of a lonely man trying to drown his sorrows and escape his demons in artificial paradises and impossible loves.