The Venice Film Festival just made waves as the world awaits the release of esteemed director Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey and Omar Apollo. I have been flooded with content from cast interviews on Instagram, and I’m not ashamed to admit, Drew Starkey edits on TikTok. I’m not sure when the film will hit theaters, but I can say without a doubt I will be there opening weekend. Its imminent arrival to pop culture and the audiences’ premature reactions have inspired me to write about one of the most fascinating aspects of the Luca Guadagnino universe: the Guadagnino gaze.
The director has an uncanny ability to choose the next “It girl” (gender-neutral) in mainstream media. He is able to transform extremely talented actors just subtly enough so that audiences are attracted to them, but don’t see them as two-dimensional. He used constant innuendo and artfully directed intimate scenes to convince the audience that there has never been anyone more attractive in pop culture (and make them wonder where Mike Faist has been all their lives).
Being an “It girl” is all about image. Google it and you’ll find a definition stating “an attractive young woman who is perceived to have both sex appeal and a personality that is especially engaging.” While in this moment I’m not confining the “It girl” label to just women, the rest of the definition still applies.
The clearest example of this is obviously the “Challengers” epidemic of last year that profoundly took over pop culture.
Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor’s hold over viewers was one I find incomparable to anything else. The actors are charming and talented on their own, but with the complicated dynamics that Guadagnino places them in, along with the characters’ wary moral compasses, they became obsessively fascinating to all audiences. As people obsessed over who the true villain was, their focus on the actors portraying the characters grew, allowing Faist and O’Connor to skyrocket to A-list celebrity status.
Guadagnino manages to recognize talent that we as a culture are unable to before revealing their full potential in his films. Prior to the almost simultaneous release of “Ladybird” and “Call Me By Your Name,” the chances that audiences had heard of Timothée Chalamet were slim to none. In making mainstream audiences’ true introduction to this person a combination of this slightly oversexualized point of view of a powerful performance, Guadagnino creates a nuanced persona in which Chalamet is perceived in the cross-section. His talent maintains his status as an engaging actor, while his image generates sex appeal that gives him an avenue to reach a more widespread audience, earning him his “It girl” status.
We can already see this happening with the upcoming release of “Queer” starring Drew Starkey. Following the Venice Film Festival, I have noticed an arguably pre-emptive onslaught of new Starkey fans, which makes me wonder what’s in store for the “Outer Banks” actor after the film is released in theaters.
