Luca Guadagnino’s hugely disappointing adaptation of William S Burroughs’s posthumously published novella opens with Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of the Nirvana song All Apologies and randomised objects from that author’s Mexico City apartment. “Everyone is gay,” get it?
The misused music and hollow visuals set the tone for a vacuous film that frequently feels like an overstyled catalogue shoot. One half-expects price tags to appear on Vintage Typewriter and Distressed Whiskey Bottle.
Daniel Craig, unwisely rechannelling the avuncular camp of his Knives Out character, plays the Burroughs cipher William Lee, a wealthy, drunken writer enjoying boy-, opiate- and tequila-chasing while south of the border in the 1950s.
His daily stupor with like-minded American expats, including an Allen Ginsberg-alike Jason Schwartzman in a fat suit, is interrupted by the appearance of Gene (Drew Starkey), a handsome young boy toy and photographer.
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Lee’s grubby, one-sided obsession eventually coalesces into a sexual relationship, prettily shot by Guadagnino’s regular cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, entirely devoid of chemistry, and tastefully soundtracked by Atticus Ross’s earth-moving aural approximation.
In a swerve from the original text, the pair head out to the jungle in search of ayahuasca; they find Lesley Manville’s crazed botanist and a rubbish CGI snake, and merge in a psychedelic fantasy sequence, one of several ill-advised outbreaks of surrealism by numbers. A legless body? Try harder.
There is not a trace of Burroughs in the film, neither in the flaky narrative nor the prosaic tone. The robust Craig has nothing of the author’s spidery menace. Try to picture Burroughs (or a modern-day acolyte such as Kurt Cobain) as James Bond and you’ll have some sense of the miscasting. Worse still, Guadagnino’s screenplay reduces William Lee to a barroom bore. When the credits finally roll, it’s a welcome escape.
In cinemas from Friday, December 13th; streaming on Mubi in January
