Queer

An unsynchronised love story :( This certainly isn't for everyone, but it is absolutely for me! I love this. The second time around I feel I understood Allerton a lot more, and I spent more time focusing on his actions rather than his words to try and get him. He is more communicative through the actions he is unable to control than anything, his constant longing glances despite distancing himself from Lee, the fascination with the way Lee speaks, taking pictures of him and barely touching but touching still. Drew Starkey did such an incredible job embodying this character, who even in the book is borderline indecipherable. Describing it as an unsynchronised love is really beautiful, and I think that really fits. There was so much love and longing between them, but Lee's was completely realized and Allerton could barely face what he was feeling. I'm not Queer... I'm disembodied. Every time Lee speaks of his queerness he describes it as an ailment, his illness, a curse passed down through generations. That is such a universal feeling, feeling you were born wrong and need to be fixed. Lee is "medicating" himself through his ailment with various substances, but Allerton leans towards distance and cruelty as his cure. It's not a story of one who is accepting his sexuality and the other who isn't, Allerton is so much more complicated than that. He feels but it can't be articulated, it keeps slipping away from him and then it comes out in these minsicule moments that Lee holds on to and forms the basis of their relationship around. But he can't keep up with it, the back and forth between feeling and pushing away. Even his dreams can not articulate what he is feeling, he was just so distressed. What is he afraid of? I'm not sure he even knows what he is so afraid of, but he sees it with Lee on ayahuasca and he chooses to leave it behind. Whatever it is he can not face, that he has been fighting and trying to understand. It is easier to leave. I'll move on, this is just very special to me. Again, noticed so many more beautiful details in the set design, costume, and direction. On my way out of the theatre some people behind me were saying there were "too many shots"... if I see them again its brass knuckles out. This is something I could watch so many times and find more details, so much thought went into this. It was executed extraordinarily well. Details everywhere, the centipede, relazacion, fox and badger. Delightful. The third act is such a doozy and I just adore when things go off the rails, because it is done right. We go from love and lust to a jungle adventure but... it works. From the beginning, there is this sense that these men are playing in their dollhouse, they are essentially in Barbieland. It's a colonial perspective of this exotic place where they have their freedom. The sets are too perfect, every interaction with somebody who seems to be a local is executed like an old movie. At every point where there is distance, the set becomes a cartoonish miniature. It almost feels like Lee's idea, of the world he is living in. It is idealised and it falls apart with him. Overall I really adore this if that wasn't clear from the start. It is such a thinker and that's the best part, I don't want to get it immediately. I want to think about it for months on end as I have been, and uncover new secrets with every watch and read. I think that's really one of the best things that cinema can be, a chamber of secrets. Drew Starkey, a man hasn’t looked that good on film since Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. MUBI Advanced Screening