Toward the end of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, there’s a scene that doesn’t appear in William Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical source novel. The heroin-addicted writer William Lee (Daniel Craig) has been crashing through the jungle with the young, distant ex-Navy man he’s fixated upon, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), in search of ayahuasca or yagé. Unlike the characters in the book, they find the drug, and what follows is a psychedelic, stunningly-choreographed melding of their bodies and minds. As the boundaries between their flesh break down, we see Lee and Allerton as two halves of a seamless whole, linked by a newfound “telepathy” with drastic consequences for their relationship.
Speaking at a Dazed x MUBI Cinema Club screening last week, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes – who penned both Queer and Challengers – noted how the two, very different films can be seen as mirror images, both building toward a climactic conversation without words. For Guadagnino, there’s also a more visceral impulse behind the ayahuasca scene; it reflects, he says, the wish to “crawl inside” the subject of one’s desire.
Given this central image – the dissolving membrane between bodies and minds – it’s easy to see why Guadagnino approached the London-based painter Jake Grewal to create a poster for Queer. In Grewal’s oil paintings and charcoal sketches, too, we see figures dissolving into each other, or into their environment: a shadowy forest, or a beach at dusk. Guadagnino was drawn to these “permeable” boundaries between figures and the space they inhabit, he tells Dazed, and the resulting poster is a perfect example: two bodies blur together in soft focus, dappled with the same kind of dreamy light as Guadagnino’s Mexico City.
Below, Luca Guadagnino and Jake Grewal tells us more about the collaboration.
Do you remember your first encounter with each other’s work?
Luca Guadagnino: I’ve been following Jake’s work for the last three years. As soon as I was in front of [his] art, I was hit by it. I found a mixture of romanticism and eeriness that was very strong for me. What I also love about Jake’s work is the personal… the idea that the work comes from such an intimate reflection of self. And that’s also very fitting for a story like Queer, which is the literary and cinematic translation of the self of William Burroughs.
Jake Grewal: The first [Guadagnino] film I saw was I Am Love, with Tilda Swinton. There was an element of adolescence and personal discovery that really speaks to my sensibilities. That’s something I’m drawn to. And obviously they’re all incredibly stylish as well.
Then obviously, I saw Call Me By Your Name, and Challengers. Call Me By Your Name was quite incredible. It was during a summer where I decided to start making queer, figurative paintings, so I was kind of doing my homework, and I’d just listened to the book. I was working as a cleaner, cleaning these offices, listening to homoerotic books. And the film encapsulates everything… a kind of freedom, but also the nervousness as well.
The mysteries and the depths of the unconscious are such that no labels can contain the multitudes of who we are – Luca Guadagino
A central motif in Queer is this idea of feeling ‘disembodied’, and this word also seems to resonate with a lot of Jake’s work. What does ‘disembodied’ mean to you both?
Luca Guadagnino: ‘I’m not queer, I’m disembodied.’ This is a line that’s spoken twice in the movie, once by Lee in a dream, and once by Allerton, when he’s disappearing into the jungle in the middle of an ayahuasca trip. For me, what is interesting is the idea of repression, how repression comes at the cost of the adherence of yourself to yourself. Disembodiment is a tragic incapacity to fully embrace every possibility of [an] encounter with the other.
Also, I feel that reclaiming your identity through a label is something that comes with a very taxing cost. It’s a very Anglo-Saxon way of doing things. The mysteries and the depths of the unconscious are such that no labels can contain the multitudes of who we are, no matter your identity. So for me, disembodiment is also that.
Jake Grewal: In the film, there’s this yearning that Daniel Craig’s character has for Drew Starkey’s. It’s this kind of feeling that people have, where they’re wanting for something other than what they have, and they’re trying to adjust themselves in order to get that. Also, being homosexual was illegal [in the US] at the time of the film. So it’s a kind of yearning within oneself to be liberated, but not actually being able to act on that because of these constraints, both external and in yourself.
Queer is very concerned with the possibility of pushing back against external categories, and pushing outside these self-imposed boundaries as well. How did you think about translating that to the screen, or onto the canvas?
Luca Guadagnino: Taking a step backward, I want to say that in this amazing body of work Jake is building, the boundaries between the space and the figure are so permeable. That is a good lead for what we wanted when we filmed and edited the ayahuasca scene. We wanted the lovers to finally merge as a whole, facing the depth of their connection, so terminal that eventually, when they wake up, they are terrified, and have to run away from it. Not because of social constrictions, but because of their own constrictions, because the encounter with the other, in its profound and brutal force, is something unbearable. The most important thing is the capacity we have within ourselves for suffocation, how we suffocate ourselves.
Jake Grewal: It’s that thing you have in a relationship where you get so close, and within each other, that your shadow self is exposed in the other person. You can’t even face it sometimes, and then you run away, or there’s some kind of catastrophe that repels you from one another. It’s that porous exchange between the environment and each other, and a unity with everything – you and me, and I am you, and we are the environment too.
Luca, you’ve described desire as wanting to climb inside someone, almost.
Luca Guadagnino: I honestly think it’s a very beautiful ambition of every artist, that you are always aiming for this kind of contact with the other. I feel that Jake has this kind of titanic aim to that end. It’s uncompromising, and people are scared by it – the receivers, but not the artists.
Jake Grewal: I don’t know about that. [Laughs.] Because I get a bit scared too.
Luca Guadagnino: Of course! But you would not be so paralysed by your fear that you run away from it for good.
Jake Grewal: You’re right. Otherwise what are you doing on the planet? You have to show yourself, and face up to your fears, otherwise you’re not going to be able to grow. If you’re not growing, then what’s the point?
You have to show yourself, and face up to your fears, otherwise you’re not going to be able to grow. If you’re not growing, then what’s the point? – Jake Grewal
Finally, is there anything you’ve got coming up that you’re particularly excited about, professional projects or otherwise?
Luca Guadagnino: I’m excited to receive the paintings that I purchased from Jake, because I can’t wait to hang them. I have one painting and one charcoal, one a study of the other. Having done many remakes in my life, I love the idea of the model, and the replica of the model. I love the idea of having the juxtaposition of the two together, both as a reminder that originality is not a real value, but what is valuable is the gesture of the artist. And, number two, to showcase the breadth of the art.
Jake Grewal: It’s also the illustration of a creative journey, of digging for some kind of depth through the process.
Luca Guadagnino: Yes.
And Jake, you have an upcoming exhibition at Studio Voltaire [Under the Same Sky]. What does that represent for you, as a moment in your journey as an artist?
Jake Grewal: As a moment, I don’t know. I’ve been a fan of Studio Voltaire as a teenager. I grew up in south London, and I’d talk to my friend in Clapham, like, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing if we both had shows here at some point?’ So it was a kind of adolescent dream, that’s now being actualised.
Jake Grewal’s Queer poster is available to buy, as an edition of 250, via the A24 shop.
