HEADER BY JACK ROWE

From the tennis-thruple dynamics of Challengers to the telepathic eroticism of Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey’s “unsynchronised love” in Queer, Justin Kuritzkes’ introduction into the film industry has been rather rainbow-hued.

Both acclaimed films, directed by Academy Award nominee Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name), were immediately thrust into the pop zeitgeist (and Gay Twitter) as a result of Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor’s sizzling chemistry, as well as Craig and Starkey’s explicit sex scenes.

Praised by critics as Craig’s finest performance and a breakout moment for Outer Banks star Starkey, Queer is now available to stream in the UK on MUBI. In this interview, we speak with Kuritzkes about his “rare” partnership with Guadagnino— a third collaboration, based on DC Comics character Sgt. Rock is on the way!—and Allerton’s true feelings for Lee, as well as his interpretation of Queer’s abstract finale.

Justin, congratulations on the year you’ve had with both Challengers and Queer. This is such a rainbow-hued introduction into the industry for you?

It’s been lovely. Challengers was a film that embraced the idea that, in a love triangle, desire flows in all directions. In the friendship between characters like Art and Patrick, they’ve grown up and gone through puberty together. They were kind of orphans, sent away by their families to live in this tennis academy, spending their whole lives playing against each other. To me, that felt like a well of pent-up repression. As for what that repression specifically looks like, I don’t think the film is necessarily concerned with it on an identity level. But it was definitely something Luca responded to. Then Queer is a film I simply wouldn’t have written without Luca. It was a movie that was important to him, something he’d wanted to make for a long time. When a director like Luca asks you to be part of his filmography twice, you don’t say no, because that’s all we have—our filmography. To be part of that is the greatest honor.

How did your partnership with Luca come to fruition?

With Challengers, I had never written a film before, and I had no idea who I would eventually make it with. No one knew I was writing it—I just did it. I finished the script, and through my agent, sent it to a bunch of producers, eventually deciding to work with Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connor. They were really the ones who got it into the hands of Zendaya and Luca. First of all, I was a massive fan of Luca’s work, so when I heard he had read the script and was interested, I was over the moon. In our first conversation, it was immediately clear to me that he was one of my people. We spoke the same language. We were thrown right into the process of making the movie almost immediately.