The Hand Job in Queer Is Too Short
You don’t have to be a hand-job maestro to detect something off about the one in Luca Guadagnino’s new film Queer. Adapted from the William S. Burroughs novella of the same name, the movie is a love story between an American expat in Mexico City with a taste for twinks and the twink of said expat’s dreams. It’s set in the 1940s. A relentlessly sweaty Daniel Craig stars as titular queer William Lee, while Drew Starkey plays the questionable fella he’s chasing, Eugene Allerton. (Plus, Omar Apollo plays a nameless bar patron with a great ass.) After some coy maneuvering, Lee finally coaxes his beloved to his apartment, where they consummate their relationship in a scene of tender, hungry beauty. It’s almost perfect — if not for the distractingly short handy.
The brevity of the wank job was so obtrusive that I pointed it out to my co-workers immediately after we all exited our initial screening. The fact that that’s what stood out is telling. Queer, now showing in theaters in New York and L.A., is a head-scratching odyssey that throws bad CGI snakes, flesh-blurring choreography, and Jason Schwartzman in a fat suit into its old-world fairy tale. It gets more discombobulating as the central pair, both drug users, skedaddle to the Ecuadorian jungle to telepathically connect on ayahuasca. The movie’s best moments are sex scenes, when it pares down to its essence of two odd lovers trying for communion.
A new trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s ‘QUEER’ has been released.
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) November 25, 2024
Starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey.pic.twitter.com/a4T4zZrW2X
The scene under discussion, or the initial one, is full of frisson. Lee (he goes by his last name) and Eugene hover, trembling, before their lips meet, as if afraid of the irreversible gravity of what’s to come. Lee plants small kisses along Eugene’s chest and moves downward, the camera alternating between Eugene’s seraphic face, his neck gripped by Lee’s strong hand, and the latter reverently working below the belt. Eugene climaxes, they kiss, then the young man reaches down to reciprocate. A few pulls, and he’s done.
Why so rushed? My female colleagues were also puzzled, relieving me of the weirdness of feeling like a fujoshi. (No shame, just not my deal.) “That did actually occur to me,” one said. Others felt more strongly: “Why was it only, like, three seconds after Daniel Craig did all … that.” Validation! I was not a weirdo but a critic pointing out an obvious aesthetic disruption. An empathic ally worrying about penile friction sensitivity. As I have learned from my dutiful study of comedian Jacqueline Novak’s blowjob opus, Get on Your Knees, and totally not at all from real-life experience, a phallus is a delicate, temperamental thing. It must be warmed up, any acceleration in speed teased gradually.
This is an issue of realism as well as symmetry. In impromptu town halls I’ve conducted on this matter — participants included some women, some gay men, and one indeterminate stranger unprepared to witness the mechanics of my intensely logistical mind — some raised the possibility that Lee might have just been very, very horny. Even then, though, they thought a few seconds still might not be enough to get someone off. (I did not count the seconds while watching, but it felt like three to five.) They also wondered, having not yet seen the movie, whether the act had been abridged to emphasize Eugene’s sexual inexperience. That seems unlikely — I assume he’s at least masturbated before, and also Lee seemed fairly satisfied.
What I do know for certain: In both of this year’s Guadagnino films, the boy bisexuals — Eugene has a lady friend in the movie — adopt a light touch with their male counterparts. Challengers’ Art and Patrick make out accidentally and swap churros with each other but don’t go any further. That restraint is a real shame. It leaves attentive observers like me feeling, dare I say, a little blue-balled.
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