New York 1953. Bill Lee, ein erfolgloser Autor, verdient seinen Lebensunterhalt als giftsprühender Kammerjäger. Er und seine Frau spritzen sich in ihrer Freizeit das Insektenpulver und stürzen dadurch in eine irre Welt voller Halluzinationen. Drogenumnebelt erschießt Bill seine Gattin und unterhält sich stundenlang mit einem riesigen Käfer, der Bill davon überzeugt, daß Agenten der "Interzone" hinter ihm her sind. Da verschafft sich Bill ein Ticket in die "Interzone", einer Welt jenseits der Realität.
"This David Cronenberg masterpiece breaks every rule in adapting a literary classic – maybe "On Naked Lunch" would be a more accurate title – but justifies every transgression with its artistry and audacity. Adapted not only from William S. Burroughs's free-form novel but also from several other Burroughs works, this film pares away all the social satire and everything that might qualify as celebration of gay sex, yielding a complex and highly subjective portrait of Burroughs himself (expertly played by Peter Weller) as a tortured sensibility in flight from his own femininity, proceeding zombielike through an echo chamber of projections (insects, drugs, typewriters) and repudiations. According to the densely compacted metaphors that compose this dreamlike movie, writing equals drugs equals sex, and the pseudonymous William Lee, as politically incorrect as Burroughs himself, repeatedly disavows his involvement in all three." Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
"The problem with films about the Beat generation is that so few are genuinely transgressive. But "Naked Lunch" is a different beast altogether... Rather than attempting to adapt the book in a literal sense, Cronenberg treated Burroughs' schizoid prose as a secondary source. He gave it structure, but it remains essentially a bizarre work." Tom Graham, Little White Lies (2016)
"Cronenberg's film of William Burroughs' novel fleshes out the plot with details from the junkie author's life. ... Through his most complex and brilliant cinematic metaphor to date, Cronenberg links Bill Lee's drug-induced images with Lee's eventual salvation, as he comes to terms with his repressed homosexuality and discovers another, more permanent way of altering reality – the writing of his novel 'The Naked Lunch'. Burroughs purists may be disappointed, but this dark distillation of the novel's themes gets closer to its essence than any 'straight' adaptation could hope to do." Time Out London
englische Originalfassung mit deutschen Untertiteln
• Regie: David Cronenberg
• Kanada u.a. 1991
• 115 Minuten
• DCP
• FSK 16
• Deskriptoren: www.fsk.de