A little more attention’s been given to individual songs from Queer than its star duo’s score. Sinead O’Connor’s Nirvana cover that opens the film; the actual Nirvana song that punctuates a standout scene; and a track produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. But the duo’s 16-track album, their second this year for Luca Guadagnino, is now streaming, proving both a more sedate selection than Challengers and no less true to the ethereal, haunted tones that have made them cinema’s premier composers for, somehow, nearly 15 years.
As Leonardo Goi said in his review, “Queer makes no mystery of its artificiality. Mexico City is never called by its name, and Stefano Baisi’s production design makes ample use of matte paintings and soundstages to craft the rooms Lee skulks in and out of. In this nameless purgatory, everyone exists in a trance of drug-addled rootlessness––none more so than Lee, a man with no job and just enough cash to hit the bar at five and begin his long, restless pursuits of sex and drugs. It’s in one of those peregrinations that he happens into Eugene (Gene) Allerton, in a meet-cute that exemplifies one of Guadagnino’s worst tendencies: to visualize these epiphanies––when a character awakes to the shattering power of their desires––with the grammar of a music video. As a non-diegetic track swells, the two men lock glances; time slows down, and so does the frame rate.”
Listen below:
