In the underbelly of 1950s Mexico City, William S. Burroughs doesn’t write a love story—he confesses a fever dream. Queer is not a film you watch. It’s a film that watches you, strips you bare, and whispers things you didn’t even know you wanted to hear. Beneath its smoky lens lies a universe of obsession, shame, and a hunger so raw it becomes spiritual.
Body Heat in Shadows
Lee, the narrator and antihero, stalks the edges of human connection like a starving man denied not food, but touch. Every moment with Allerton—a younger, indifferent man—is a slow burn of desperation. Lee doesn’t just want Allerton. He needs him. Not to love, but to possess. To consume. You can feel the sweat on Lee’s palms. His gaze clings to skin like a bruise. The film doesn’t shy away from desire; it bathes in it, naked and unashamed.
The Eroticism of Powerlessness
There’s no romance in Queer, only craving. Lee’s longing isn’t beautiful—it’s messy, broken, even pathetic. But that’s what makes it real. The film dives deep into the uncomfortable: the imbalance of attraction, the terror of unreciprocated lust, the ecstasy of surrender. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical torment seeps into every frame. It’s not about being queer. It’s about being hungry—for touch, for recognition, for the impossible promise that someone might see you and still stay.
Cinematography That Undresses You
The visuals are sticky with atmosphere. Dim hotel rooms. Endless nights. Eyes that say everything the mouths won’t. Queer doesn’t scream its queerness—it sighs it. In the curve of a shoulder, the way a cigarette is lit, the long silences that ache with withheld confession. Even silence has sweat in this film. The eroticism is slow, deliberate. Like a hand hovering just above skin, never quite touching—but still igniting.
Queer is not a comfortable film. It doesn’t want to be. It’s a mirror, cracked and intimate, held up to those of us who have ever ached for something we shouldn’t want—or couldn’t have. It’s a film about the desire that festers in the quiet. About wanting someone so badly, you lose pieces of yourself in the process.
It’s not love. It’s not lust. It’s Queer.
