“Is the sperm still in there?” That’s a question for the ages, but in the case of Luca Guadagnino’s new film, “Queer,” it’s apt in more ways than one. This particular query came (stop it) during a recent interview with Variety where Daniel Craig asked if a shot of sheets stained with semen was kept in the final cut’s establishing scene. In this opening tableaux, Guadagnino’s camera holds on a series of items that evoke the story about to unfold between Craig’s protagonist and the object of his desire, Drew Starkey’s Eugene Allerton. According to Guadagnino, that particular shot Craig’s referring to has since been removed after the actors watched a very early cut, but have no fear, Guadagnino reassures us, because, “Of course, there’s a lot of semen in the movie.”
Early on, Craig’s William Lee takes an unnamed hottie (played by singer/songwriter Omar Apollo) back to his seedy motel room. Like he did with Oliver’s sculpted chest in “Call Me By Your Name” and Patrick’s marble thighs in “Challengers,” Guadagnino reveres the beauty of the male form again here in “Queer,” lingering on Apollo’s Adonis-like torso as Craig takes him in his mouth, hands gripped on each cheek. But where the end result was once hidden in a peach or left to our imagination as the camera pans away, “Queer” isn’t so shy about depicting the climax of the climax. When this initial sad rendezvous is over, all that remains is semen strewn on a hand towel, and Lee alone once more, satisfied physically, if not mentally.
The thrust of “Queer,” based on William S. Burroughs’ novella, is Lee thrusting his way through Mexico City in the 1950s, craving connection of any kind. Tequila and heroin can only dull the pain for so long before Lee’s desperate yearning for something more cuts through the haze and sends him back out into dingy bars and narrow alleys, prowling with a predatory lust for men. There, he encounters Allerton, a clean-cut, sexually ambiguous serviceman whose vaguely aloof interest in Lee sparks a feverish desire that eventually leads them both to a grotty bed. In a blur of cheap brandy and sweltering heat, their so-called friendship becomes something more physical as Lee starts caressing each line of Allerton’s chest before burrowing his face in the young man’s lap, Lee’s thumb in his mouth as he sucks him hard. Lost to the rhythm of Lee’s tongue, Allerton writhes on the bed, moaning as sweat pours off his skin until he finishes. With cum still in his mouth, Lee pulls himself back up and kisses Allerton deeply before wiping away the remnants of semen running down his chin.
The scene in question made quite a splash at Venice where “Queer” debuted back in September. Andrew Garfield, who’s not even in the film, also gushed over it in an interview ahead of its release (via The Hollywood Reporter), where he described the blowjob as “genuinely beautiful… so tender and full of longing.” Why Guadagnino showed Garfield that scene in particular over any other in this 137-minute movie is one of the great mysteries. Perhaps it was the sheer novelty of depicting cum in a somewhat mainstream film like this that inspired Luca to show this scene off. This wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened though, even if Guadagnino himself hasn’t gone there before (that cum-filled peach, notwithstanding).
Beyond “Queer” (and queer porn), Hollywood movies have actually played a lot with sperm over the years. Early examples include comedies like the “Look Who’s Talking” movies from the ’80s and ’90s — or at least the first two before animals got involved — and Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* But Were Afraid To Ask,” where the director plays an actual sperm cell (or spermatozoa, for the medically minded). However, it wasn’t until the gross-out comedies of the late ’90s and early aughts that a load of loads appeared more regularly on film.
Blame “There’s Something About Mary” for the splooge deluge that followed in the likes of “Scary Movie,” “American Pie,” “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” and “40 Days and 40 Nights,” where Josh Hartnett’s character, abstaining from sex of any kind, dreams of an explosive load (of laundry) that’s not exactly subtle in its message. Over a decade on, “Ted 2” brought all this to a head with an actual explosion of jizz in a sperm bank, Mark Walhberg was drenched head to toe in the great elixir of life.
Aside from playing cum for laughs, what do these films have in common? They’re all incredibly straight. But what’s seen as funny and revolting in comedies like these can take on a very different role in queer and homoerotic cinema where semen is actually desired and can represent so much more than just something icky. Take “Shortbus,” John Cameron Mitchell’s spunky follow-up to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” where James (Paul Dawson) manages what so many teenage boys have tried and failed to do for centuries — suck his own penis. The resultant climax is actually real here — there’s no condensed milk substitute in sight — but Mitchell’s explicit moment of self-love isn’t just included for shock value. It’s an act of empowerment for James, rediscovering love for himself in a sexually unsatisfying relationship where the couple have otherwise begun experimenting with threesomes and polyamory to fix their problems. Seeing the actual act of ejaculation on-screen magnifies the euphoria of this moment and how much joy can be derived from prioritizing and pleasuring yourself as well as others.
It’s not just experimental arthouse fare that dabbles in such matters. Even Oscar-nominated movies like Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También” occasionally include cum shots that speak to the dynamics at play rather than juvenile attempts at humor. Early on in the film, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna masturbate on parallel diving boards, shooting their seed into the pool below. Hygiene aside, watching them casually pleasure themselves in each other’s company speaks to the homoerotic undertones of their friendship, foreshadowing what’s to come later (so to speak).
Another snubbed awards contender, last year’s “All of Us Strangers,” notably included cum in a pivotal sex scene too, just like “Queer.” The sex between Paul Mescal’s Harry and Andrew Scott’s Adam isn’t quite as carnal though. A familiarity has already developed between the pair at this point, but even so, it’s still significant that Adam lets Harry lick cum off his chest (and not just because it’s the “Normal People” guy and Hot Priest from “Fleabag” who are doing the licking).
Much of the trauma that Adam’s reckoning with throughout the film stems from growing up as a gay man during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. He’s been closed off ever since, refusing to commit his heart to another in fear of what could happen to him, to both his emotions and his physical body. But here at last, Adam lets Harry, a younger gay man who doesn’t bear the scars of that era, taste his cum without flinching. In doing so, Adam begins to overcome his shame and that embedded fear, no longer resisting quite so hard in the face of Adam’s warmth and compassion.
Complex feelings of lust, romance, intimacy, and even power dynamics can be magnified by the depiction of cum in queer storytelling because the act of sharing it — between people and also on screen — is intimate and desired, not gross and reviled. Even when it’s supposed to be kind of gross, like in Brandon Cronenberg’s “Infinity Pool,” when Mia Goth surprises Alexander Skarsgård with a handjob to roughly assert her dominance, it still serves an important function. In this case, it’s the moment we see drops of his seed splatter on the ground that most intensely disrupts the social norms Goth’s Gabi will later go on to demolish completely, setting the tone for the chaos that will follow.
This notion, which is queer in spirit, if not sexually, nonetheless joins a growing wave of “queer” cinema that’s becoming more explicit in its portrayal of semen at a time when cinema as a whole feels more sanitized than it’s been in decades. These risque images have always been more accepted in arthouse fare, straight or otherwise, (see also Gaspar Noé’s “Love” for another recent example), but to watch LGBTQ+ films like “Queer” and “All of Us Strangers” push back against these puritanical impulses on the fringe of mainstream cinema is noteworthy. As much as some people might continue to argue that sex is unnecessary on screen and can even detract from the stories we’re watching, along comes a filmmaker like Luca Guadagnino to remind us that the opposite is true.
In “Queer,” the sex is hot, and for gay audiences especially, watching Lee and Allerton make out with a mouthful of you-know-what after the blowjob is the stuff that (wet) dreams are made of. But as in “All of Us Strangers,” “Y Tu Mamá También,” and even gross-out comedies like “Scary Movie,” Guadagnino’s decision to include cum in this scene was made with very deliberate intent in mind. Lee is lust personified — which is curious given that he says it’s “nobler to die as a man than live on as a sex monster” — but his horniness is not so much a biological urge as it is a psychological need to connect in any way possible. And it’s part of the desperation to stave off the intense loneliness and insecurity that can come with being queer in any time or place, but especially a fictional Mexico City in the 1950s.
It’s no wonder that Lee is quick to swallow Allerton’s cum. He would devour the boy whole if he could. And even when Lee does (sort of) win Allerton, establishing a contract that schedules regular sex between them while they travel to Ecuador in search of ayahuasca, it’s still not enough. The escape that physical intimacy and the act of climax provide is as fleeting as the climax itself, pushing Lee to go beyond the physical and seek out even deeper ways to connect, namely telepathy, by the film’s end.
But such extremes wouldn’t be as convincing if not for the power of that initial attraction, that primal need he feels to consume Allerton, cum and all. Could this journey still work without the cum? Perhaps. But to remove the sperm from “Queer” — or any of the films mentioned here — would be to lose something important regardless, this tangible element of sex that speaks to wider themes and ideas in each story. In short, it would be a mess.
“Queer” is now in theaters from A24.
