QUEER** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 10

This is a long film for little plot or interiority.  It proceeds as follows:  ageing disheveled junkie called Lee hooks up with younger man called Eugene who may or may not actually be queer in 1950s Mexico.  They travel to a tropical jungle to take ayahuasca, have a trippy experience, then part. Decades later the older guy is apparently still in love with the boy. And even this overdoes the level of narrative propulsion which is basically nil. I never felt as though I had a handle on whether Lee was actually in love or in lust until the final five minutes of the film. I didn't feel invested in the relationship or the intricacies of whether Lee was a trick or a love interest for Eugene.  There's a limit to how far you can watch Daniel Craig drink tequila in a linen suit.

Still, there are a few redeeming features to this film.  The needle drops featuring Nirvana and Prince are anachronistic but effective.  There's a wonderfully unexpected and bonkers and against type cameo from Lesley Manville (Disclaimer).  Director Luca Guadagnino and his leads, Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, are admirably brave in depicting gay sex. And as I said before, the final five minutes were genuinely moving. But boy there was a lot of self-indulgent, handsomely produced, but utterly dull chaff to wade through to get to the grain.

QUEER has a running time of 135 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2024. It goes on release in the USA on November 27th and in the UK on December 13th.

CHALLENGERS**

I am giving CHALLENGERS one star for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' occasionally superb electronic soundtrack and a further star for cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cheeky tennis ball POV shot. Otherwise CHALLENGERS is a damp squib of an attempt at a sexy adult relationship drama, replete with hammy dialogue and superficial characaterisation.

All of which is a shame for the multi-talented star Zendaya, who was using the film to rebadge herself from being a Disney child star to a serious actor.  The weird thing is that I am not sure anyone apart from Zendaya thinks she's pigeonholed in that way.  A brave, vulnerable performance in Euphoria put paid to peppy, pretty Zendaya the teen star.  And Sam Levinson's MALCOLM & MARIE gave her a role in an actually fully fleshed out proper adult relationship, playing opposite John David Washington.  Now that was a toxic relationship shown in all its gnarly and credible glory!

So back to CHALLENGERS.  The person responsible for this ludicrously melodramatic film is debut feature screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes.  No-one in a real relationship has ever spoken in the way that his characters speak.  Watching this felt like watching a Bollywood movie or 1980s soap opera. As a result, the relationships aren't credible and the characters struggle to capture one's attention or sympathy.  To be sure, the film tries hard to camouflage its superficiality with tricksy camera shots and a non-linear narrative. But unpick the flash and there's nothing there.

Zendaya "stars" as junior Tennis ace Tashi whose career is cruelly ended with a brutal knee injury.  She vicariously lives her career by coaching her successful husband Art (Mike Faist) but they have little sexual chemistry.  He hits a bump in confidence and she enters him in a challenger tournament to get some court time, at which point they both run into Patrick (Josh O'Connor - MOTHERING SUNDAY) - a washed-up former peer and lover of Tashi and potentially Art.

The irony is that this is meant to be Zendaya's first headline film, and she has been the star of the red carpet promoting it.  But when you watch the film you realise that she's just the tennis ball that Art and Patrick are playing with. The film is ACTUALLY one about homosocial and potentially homosexual love. The climax thus has actually nothing to do with Tashi at all, but both players falling into each other over the tennis net. Poor Zendaya. She isn't even centred in her own film.

I am coming to the slow realisation that I do not like director Luca Guadagnino's films. But they appear to be critical darlings, certainly since he came to global recognition with CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. I just don't get the hype.

CHALLENGERS is rated R and has a 131 minute running time. It is on global release.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME - Day 7 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has two problems that I couldn’t get over. In fact, even more than that, I had a miserable and difficult time watching this film - even though it was one of my most anticipated and by one of the most exciting directors working today - Luca Guadagnino. The first problem is its length. I kid you not, but basically nothing happens in the first hour of this film. A pretty arrogant and self-indulgent middle-aged man called Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives at an Italian villa owned by an academic (Michael Stuhlbarg) he’s working with. There seems to be an antipathy between Oliver and the professor’s teenage son, Elio and each of them seems to be flirting with girls about town. As we move into the second hour of the film it becomes clear that the antipathy is of the kind one might see in a playground where kids pretend not to really like the girl or boy they actually like. Oliver pulls back from taking the flirtation further but actually teases Elio by suggesting trips to town together and initiating physical intimacy. The messages are mixed but Oliver clearly knows that the relationship would be seen as wrong. He cites this as a reason to pull back. 

And this is where we get to the second problem with the film: the casting of Armie Hammer. For a start, he can’t match the acting ability of Michael Stuhlbarg (magnificent in his one big scene) or indeed newcomer Timothée Chalamet as Elio. When the father generously calls Oliver good, and the relationship meaningful, I just sat there wondering how he’d got that from the flaky, selfish  (and apart from one opening gambit to show his intelligence, not conspicuously smart or interesting) personality I’d seen on screen. A related issue is that while in real life Armie Hammer is 31, for me he looked a lot older than that. And that gave the relationship a pretty nasty feel to it - one of uneven power, grooming and exploitation. I feel that Guadagnino really messed up with his casting and should’ve gone for someone who actually looked like a mid-20s post-doc, and a kid who looked a more mature 17 then a 14/15. And I’m pretty amazed that audiences haven’t screamed louder about this. I wonder if the critical reaction would’ve been as warm if this had played out between an old man and a 15 year old looking girl. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth indeed. 

Meester Phil's points to other issues with the film although he didn't find age to be such an issue:  he found the pacing uneven - that the film somehow didn't cohere or feel credible to him. As a result he wasn't emotionally involved. 

So, for those looking for a truly beautiful gay love story, and one that isn’t shy about explicit sex either, then check out 120 BPM and leave this behind.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Sundance, Berlin, Sydney, Melbourne, San Sebastian, Toronto, New York and London 2017. It opens in the UK on Oct 27th, in the USA on Nov 24th, in Sweden on Dec 1st, in Canada on Dec 8th, in Thailand on Dec 14th, in Australia on Dec 26th, in France on Jan 10th, in Brazil on Jan 18th, in Greece on Feb 8th and in Germany on March 1st.