Daniel Craig plays William Lee (the alter ego of author William S. Burroughs, previously played by Peter Weller in Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch), a middle-aged drug addict cruising the ex-pat gay bars of Mexico City in the early ‘50s, where he meets the aloof and alluring Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who coolly rebuffs his increasingly smitten older suitor. Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) draws out the humanity in Burrough’s autobiographical novel, distilling poetry from the writer’s barroom philosophising and typically squalid milieu. Daniel Craig’s remarkable turn is not the volte face it might seem; a versatile performer, Craig has essayed gay and sexually ambiguous characters on several occasions, notably as the death row prisoner Perry Smith, subject of Truman Capote’s fascination in Infamous (2006), and Francis Bacon’s lover and muse in Love is the Devil (1998).

Notes by David O’Mahony.