MVFF47 - RSVP Guide

Transporting us to the dives and roach motels of 1950s Mexico City with a palpable sensuousness and eroticism, Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, MVFF40) may be the ideal interpreter of Beat legend William S. Burroughs’s novel. Daniel Craig (Glass Onion, MVFF45 Opening Night) is magnificent as William Lee, a queer American ex-pat and writer in his late 40s (and Burroughs’ autobiographical alter ego). Leading a solitary, seedy life, Lee’s days and (mostly) nights are spent drinking, drugging, and on the prowl for pickups. His hedonistic haze is aided and abetted by his friend Joe—an Allen Ginsburg-ian character played by an almost unrecognizable Jason Schwartzman (The French Dispatch, MVFF44 Closing Night). But the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey, The Hate U Give, MVFF41), a handsome bi-curious student from Oklahoma stirs William into an intoxication more romantic, finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone as his hallucinogenic journey becomes steeped in desire.