NYFF63: Lucio Castro brings sexy back again and again with "Drunken Noodles"
Friday, October 10, 2025 at 9:00AM by Nick Taylor
He’s done it again, folks. Lucio Castro, the writer/director/editor behind 2019’s metaphysical tryst End of the Century, is continuing his hot streak with his latest release, entitled Drunken Noodles. The film debuted at this year’s Cannes ACID sidebar and has been casually cruising its way through the festival circuit before an unspecified US release date next year. If it comes to your town, haul ass and see it. If you can’t yet, may this review sate your appetite until it comes your way . . . .
Our lead is Adnan (Laith Khalifeh), a 30-something gay college student who’s just moved into his uncle’s Brooklyn flat for the summer. He’s interning at a gallery in Williamsburg showcasing the work of an artist he met last year (Ezriel Kornel). This man specializes in embroidered tableaus of hardcore gay sex. Adnan’s breezy itinerary - feed the cat, water the plants, go to work, cruise the park - is tidy and picturesque and maybe not fully satisfying, which he seems aware of. Drunken Noodles isn’t about rectifying this feeling but exploring the different dimensions of satisfaction, understanding, and connection that manifest from Adnan’s sexual encounters with three men: a gig worker named Yariel (Joél Isaac), the unnamed artist, and boyfriend Iggie (Matthew Risch). Even his loneliness gets a chapter of its own, complicating this saga of intimate partnerships by wondering if Adnan’s fantasy of fulfillment even needs another human being.
Castro continues to explore a vision of gay male adulthood where all forms of flesh-and-blood, tactile desire cohabitate a world built of rectilinear lines and delicate impressions. It’s an artfully constructed form of titillation that’s still recognizably human, embodied not just in the physical act of having sex but the pregnant gazes and casual conversations these men have. Adnan’s occasional awkwardness and passivity (sometimes hard to distinguish between a character point or an uneven performance from Khalifeh) proves a more intriguing vessel for Castro’s questions about how and why desire manifests itself. He’s just as likely to crave and enjoy isolation as he is real connection. The boutique gallery facing the world with glass walls is an ideal configuration for a guy who neither craves or dislikes company.
Drunken Noodles has a more laconic center of gravity than End of the Century, yet Castro plays just as deftly with intricately weaved humanity and a gentle surrealism. The formal control of his directing is still lush and quietly assured. His editing remains as playful and surprising as his writing, in tandem with Baron Cortright’s control over everyday beauty and fantastical accents. Shooting an orgy as a tableau of still-lifes, very clearly the actors holding still for several seconds as we study the compositions of their bodies, is inventive and sexy in equal measure.
Castro also captures desire as an odd, alchemic thing in a way films rarely do, as well as the unexpected potential for different kinds of exploration and resolution that’s so defining of queer hookup culture. Even the open-ended gaps between chapters leaves room for the curious mind to wander. Did Adnan get this internship in the hopes of meeting the artist again? What’s changed in his relationship with his boyfriend from one section to the next? None of the chapters end remotely as expected, and it’s exciting how Castro stays so sly and so featherweight at the same time. The cumulative build is astonishing, and the individual strands are as tantalizing as the whole.
Reader Comments (1)
"Adnan’s breezy itinerary - feed the cat, water the plants, go to work, cruise the park - is tidy and picturesque and maybe not fully satisfying"
not fully satisfying?? take out "go to work" and that's my dream timetable