An unsettling and emotionally truthful queer parable, the direct continuation of Casino Royale teaches us that finding ourselves is a painful ongoing process, not a one off event. The film delivers its lesson like a brick through a plate glass window. Cutting quickly (too quickly for many) and deeply (Octopussy this ain't!), most of the svelte running time is a setup for a showdown with Bond's most persistent and insidious enemy: himself.

If this is your first time reading a re-view on LicenceToQueer.com I recommend you read this first.

‘Inspired by Quantum of Solace’ by Herring & Haggis

Warning: this article contains discussion of severe mental health issues, including suicide ideation (suicidal thoughts). If you are experiencing these issues please make sure you talk to someone. Don’t be like Bond! Helpful links are included at the bottom of the article.

“The name’s Bond… Flaming Bond?”

“Shame shapes gay men.” - Psychotherapist Steve Cadwell (2009)

“I’m not dwelling on the past.” - Bond speaking (lying) to M in Quantum of Solace

Although Quantum of Solace doesn’t top the list of many people’s favourite Bond films, I’ve noticed a disproportionate fondness for it among queer Bond fans. I believe this is because Bond fighting his feelings of shame, rooted in his recent and distant past, can be taken as an allegory for battling with queer shame. On a queer level, the film operates as a parable: a moral lesson wrapped up in an attractive and engaging package. While Quantum of Solace is nowhere near as didactic as parables found in religious texts (such as the Bible), it’s a cautionary tale, warning us not to keep running away from our problems, causing hurt and pain to ourselves and others along the way, but instead deal with them head on.

Queers can surely relate. It doesn’t matter a jot that the protagonists of the story are straight. Indeed, the pioneer of modern queer studies, Alexander Doty, observed that:

“Traditional narrative films… which are ostensibly addressed to straight audiences, often have greater potential for encouraging a wider range of queer responses than… clearly lesbian- and gay addressed films…”

Perhaps because we queers rarely see our lives depicted accurately on screen, we latch onto anything that we instinctively recognise as reflecting our experiences. When a queer person watches Quantum of Solace, even if they don’t realise it consciously, what they see Bond go through resonates with their own experiences. Conversely, this might also be why some queer people don’t rate the film very highly: it can make for uncomfortably close-to-home viewing (and the film’s editing presents another potential barrier-to-enjoyment, but we’ll get to that in due course…).

It’s a sin

You don’t have to be queer to carry around a shame that can last an entire lifetime - but it certainly helps. People who aren’t queer may struggle to understand why most of us feel so bad about themselves, especially when people like myself live in societies where we have legal protections which, in theory at least, make us ‘equal’ to everyone else. But the reality for most of us is that we learn from society very quickly - often by the age of five or six - that we are not OK; there is something deeply wrong with us. As we grow up, this hardens into an overbearing sense that we are irredeemably different; we should be ashamed of ourselves.

We may not even realise that we’re carrying around all of this shame. Or we might assume it evaporates overnight if we decide to come out. Unfortunately, this is never the case.

Gay shame has only recently become the subject of high-profile films and TV shows, an inevitable consequence of the lack of gay writers and directors. Two of my favourite depictions of gay shame which have raised public consciousness of it are the 2019 film Rocketman, a magical-realist take on the life of Elton John, and the Russell T Davies-penned 2021 series It's A Sin, set during the decade I grew up in. The title is taken from the Pet Shop Boys song released the same year they were working on the music for The Living Daylights (they were never officially asked to join the film but some of their Bond music lives on in a later track).

The opening lines of the 1987 synthpop classic It's A Sin succinctly capture the internal monologue of self-shaming that many of us have playing on repeat in our heads:

When I look back upon my life

it’s always with a sense of shame

I’ve always been the one to blame

For everything I long to do

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too

It’s a, it's a, it’s a, it’s a sin

Although I have never been in any way religious, that doesn’t mean I’m absolved from feeling sinful. The Christian conception of sin (like that represented in the Pet Shop Boys song - “Father forgive me” - and accompanying video) is omnipresent in British culture - and that includes in Bond films. In Casino Royale, Bond asked M if she wanted him to be half monk, half hitman. Quantum of Solace shows that him mostly as a hitman, barely any monk. The religious symbolism introduced in Casino Royale is pushed to the forefront in Quantum of Solace. When M tells Bond she’s in trouble with the Americans for not being able to provide them with Le Chiffre alive, Bond responds with: “They got his body. If they'd wanted his soul, they should have made a deal with a priest.”

Crucifix shapes appear multiple times in the film and the penultimate scene takes place adjacent to a graveyard studded with crosses, setting us up for Bond’s ‘final judgement’ in the very last scenes. The film continually asks us what we consider be sinful. What do we judge to be right and wrong? Who are the heroes and who are the villains? Is anyone without sin? It’s surely no accident that the film’s plot revolves around the value of water, traditionally used in Christian ceremonies to purify. And the final fight with the ‘real villain’ symbolically takes place in a burning hotel, the sprinklers failing to bring the inferno under control. The fire almost consumes Bond and his new ally Camille. That both escape from the hellish scene indicates that there may be hope for them after all.

When I saw Quantum of Solace on its initial release, hope was in short supply. I had reached the point that psychologists call the ‘rock-bottom’. Living a lie and keeping everything in was almost intolerable. I felt bad about myself almost constantly and I regularly fantasised about suicide. It’s hardly surprising then that I found it queasily comforting watching Bond undergo a comparable ordeal in Quantum of Solace.

The source of my own self-loathing was mostly my sexual orientation, something we cannot say for Bond (he agonises over sex less than anything else). So what is the origin of Bond’s self-loathing? There are several candidates. One thing is for certain though: we can’t pin it all on Vesper.

Unfinished business

Vesper: “It doesn’t bother you, killing all those people?”

Bond: “Well I wouldn't be very good at my job if it did.”

From Casino Royale (2006)

Rewind your mind to this scene in Casino Royale for a moment. It aids one’s enjoyment of Quantum of Solace no end if you do recall the preceding film on a regular basis, your mind straining to stay in the present but constantly being dragged into the past. My advice is to stop straining and let your mind wander, holding both films in your head at once.

Recall the scene: a post poker game victory dinner of caviar and Martinis.

Bond is telling Vesper only half of the truth. He is very good at his job - too good. But contrary to what he tells Vesper over the dinner table, he is bothered when he pulls a trigger. And it’s not mere guilt he feels because sometimes the targets deserve it. He can justify these to himself: these targets are done in for duty, for his country. What’s more concerning to Bond is the slow drip-feed of shame he feels welling up with each kill, a feeling that was probably already there, perhaps since childhood, but is being supplemented whenever he takes another life.

Bond being Bond, he would rather die than willingly open up about all of this, or even admit it to himself. Perhaps it’s the near-death physical trauma at the hands - and rope - of Le Chiffre which ultimately makes Bond look inside himself and have a rare moment of self-awareness. On a secluded beach, he confides in Vesper his reason for resigning from MI6: “You do what I do for too long and there won’t be any soul left to salvage. I’m leaving with what little is left of mine.”

Bond feels a great deal of shame about killing people. Sad as Vesper’s death may be, the real tragedy of Casino Royale is that Vesper’s betrayal and suicide leads Bond to renewing his commitment to his dark profession at the expense of all else - include his self. Quantum of Solace shows us a Bond who is well on the way to becoming what he always feared he might become. Giving in to his wantonly destructive impulses is less scary to Bond than making an important life decision which may ultimately liberate him but cause him more pain in the short term. How many queer people can relate?

Process, not an event

I first came out as gay almost exactly a year after Quantum of Solace was released. When I did come out, the shame that had been building up inside of me for most of my life did not go away overnight. If anything, it got a fair bit worse for a short while. To use the water imagery from this film, coming out was what broke the dam and my self-hatred seeped into everything; it even threatened to destroy the relationship I was in at the time (and which, I’m happy to say, continues to this day).

I found that the familiar feeling of shame I had carried around with me for decades was being supplemented by something I hadn’t felt before: the sense that, by coming out, I had betrayed not only my friends and family (who I have been lying to - by omission) but mostly myself. My trust in my self was eroded, like Bond’s is in Quantum of Solace. The question I kept asking myself was: am I even the same person that I was before I came out?

I look back to photos from around that time and I’m usually smiling. Sometimes I even look confident and comfortable in my own skin. But, while liberated in some ways, I was actually extremely fragile. Appearances can be deceiving. The very end of Casino Royale presents Bond as someone who appears to know who he is. His use of his catch phrase - “The name’s Bond, James Bond” - and the first full play of his musical theme implies that he’s supremely confident, with a strong sense of self. But, as I argued in the queer re-view of that film, it’s all a performance. The suit, the oversized gun… they’re just props. He’s putting on a show for his one man audience - Mr White - and us.

We enter the end credits of Casino Royale triumphant, on top of the world. But it’s a lie.

Yes, he’s out as Bond (James Bond), but this is just the beginning of his new life - and he’s going to have to invest a lot of energy into unpicking what that really means. Just because you’ve come out as gay doesn’t mean the shame immediately goes away. Gay shame is pervasive, cropping up when you least expect it, seeping into all aspects of our lives. Like those shifting sands from Quantum of Solace’s opening titles, it gets everywhere.

Such dark introspection might feel out of place in the Bond series and some people hate it. I get that. Sometimes you’re just in the mood for Octopussy, or another Bond film ‘without consequences’. But sometimes it’s enlightening to plumb Bond’s psychological depths. Quantum of Solace gives us that opportunity. We just might not like what we find.

Inconsolable rage

M: You said you weren't motivated by revenge.

Bond: I'm motivated by my duty.

M: No. I think you are so blinded by inconsolable rage that you don't care who you hurt.

In 2005, psychologist Alan Downs coined the phrase Velvet Rage to describe “the abiding anger that results from growing up in an environment where I learn that who I am as a gay person is unacceptable, perhaps even unlovable”. Although Downs was writing about gay men specifically, this could be applied to any queer person who was made to feel different growing up. It could also be applied to straight people who, for any number of reasons, feel like outsiders. In the novels, Fleming frequently takes us inside Bond’s head and reveals how much of an outsider he thinks himself to be. Such introspection is tricky to do on film (without use of a clunky voiceover or tedious scenes of navel-gazing), although Quantum of Solace attempts it more than any other Bond movie. For a start, Bond is more often than not framed off-centre, sometimes lingering at the extreme edge of the shot. Cumulatively, it suggests that Bond is cut off from the rest of the characters. It’s only at the end, when he’s framed in a two shot alongside Camille, that we have a sense that he has made a meaningful - if fleeting - connection with another human being.

Bond is not a gay man (or at least, does not identify as such) and growing up constantly feeling rubbish about yourself is not exclusive to gay men. But like many gay men - in or out of the closet - he doesn’t want to talk about the real reasons he hates himself. He may not even be aware of them. He needs someone who knows him better than himself to bring out the truth. When he attempts to explain away his bloody deeds as the result of him doing his duty, M stops him dead: “No”. She tells him point blank that it’s “inconsolable rage” which is driving him. While it’s unlikely that the screenwriters of Quantum of Solace had Downs’ ‘velvet rage’ phrase in mind when they scripted the interaction (above) between M and Bond - the keystone of the entire film - it’s interesting that they had M use similar language to a psychologist specialising in the shame experienced by gay men.

Bond needs therapy but, as usual, he relies on a Walther PPK, his libido and a growing dependency on alcohol to find just enough solace to get him through the day. All these do is mask the pain he feels inside. Physical pain means nothing to him: in scene after scene he just shrugs it off. He spends most of the film with cuts and bruises on his face but these are nothing compared with the mental scars.

By the time M tells him the truth about what is driving him, Bond has hurt a great number of people, killing them almost robotically, the epitome of a blunt instrument, wielded almost indiscriminately. Almost.

As former editor of gay magazine Attitude and author Matthew Todd has noted, “self-loathing can turn deadly” and most - if not all - homophobic attacks are perpetrated by people who hate themselves more than their targets. Sadly, some perpetrators are themselves queer. Many of the most heinous acts of violence enacted on LGBTQ+ communities in recent years, such as the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, have been perpetrated by self-loathing queer people.

And yet, statistically-speaking, the biggest threat we LGBTQ+ people face is ourselves. Dozens of studies have shown that queer people are massively more likely to go to dangerous lengths to alleviate anxiety brought about by self-shaming. The full extent of the problem is only now becoming known because health services rarely record the sexual orientations of patients so more comprehensive data doesn’t exist. But the data we do have, and countless anecdotal cases, show that queer people are especially prone to engaging in risky behaviours, self-medicating with drink and thinking about taking their own lives. We see all of these ramifications of shame play out with Bond in Quantum of Solace.

Who you hurt

I find it intriguing that many of the people Bond hurts in this film bear more than a passing resemblance to himself, including hitman Edmund Slate (the bloodiest Bond kill of all time?) and the bodyguard he allows to fall off the roof of the opera house. Each of these encounters reinforces the idea that Bond’s bloodlust cannot be slaked because the real target is himself. Each act of violence sends him further on a downward spiral and nothing brings him comfort. Although some express incomprehension at the title Quantum of Solace, has there ever been a more apt Bond title?

Matthew Todd observes that, even with all the external threats gay men face (such a homophobic abuse from people on the street), these are nothing compared with those we carry around inside us. As he puts it:

“A man coming towards us with a knife is a threat we can deal with… But what I believe happens when a child has been self-shamed… is that subconsciously he has perceived himself as the threat, so the threat is something from which he can never escape: he stays stuck in constant flight or fight mode.”

This is almost perfectly analogous with Bond’s behaviour in Quantum of Solace. He’s eminently capable of disarming a knife-wielding villain and stabbing them in the neck without breaking much of a sweat. As Camille observes later: “There’s something horribly efficient about you”.

But the real antaognist of the film is Bond himself and his slowly eroding soul, which he wears away with every kill and every Martini. The most revealing scene, very much the emotional heart of the film (occurring almost exactly midway through the running time), is where Bond attempts to find his quantum of solace in six Vesper Martinis, a truly staggering volume of alcohol. He fails, of course, like any addict. It’s telling that M tells Bond “you don’t care who you hurt”. Whether he’s consciously aware of it or not, this includes hurting himself.

Bond’s trauma begins

Traumatic experiences can lead to feelings of shame. And chronic recurrent humiliation of the type many queer people experience (in the school playground and beyond) has been shown to be the most damaging form of trauma of all.

As with a lot of real-life trauma, the precise origin of Bond’s is hard to locate and it’s unlikely to be the result of a singular event but the result of cumulative episodes. And it almost certainly begins well before Casino Royale. Like the trauma of gay men, Bond’s shame is probably rooted in his childhood, although this is not dealt with explicitly until Skyfall. We are led to infer that something has been eating away at Craig’s Bond for some time. In another of Casino Royale’s dinner scenes (the one on the train) Vesper observes that MI6 actively seeks out “maladjusted young men” to add to their roster of “former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches”, accurately skewering the mindset of the type of man who would rather possess a new Omega than deal with their emotional problems (I speak from personal experience here!).

Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are not the first Bond films to bring up past trauma. In the previous film continuity, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service shows Bond clearing out his desk drawers, finding various mementos from previous missions. Brief snatches of the John Barry motifs from previous films are used to make sure we get the point: Bond is raking through his past. Although the scene is played lightly, one of the items is Red Grant’s garotte watch, which is surely not a pleasant reminder for Bond. This trauma is of the physical variety however, rather than the emotional sort.

Infrequent callbacks to Bond’s dead wife are used to ground the action throughout the series (The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, Licence to Kill, The World Is Not Enough). And Bond’s parents’ death in a climbing accident is alluded to in GoldenEye. More often, however, we are encouraged to wipe our memories clean completely and start afresh. One of the reasons Diamonds Are Forever is so reviled nowadays is because it dispenses with Bond’s trauma over Tracy’s death in the first few minutes. And yet, the same fans who see this as a missed opportunity to delve into Bond’s psyche are often the same people who decry the Craig era for its attempt at a more fixed continuity. Admittedly, this is partly because of the manner in which this has been ‘retconned’ in Spectre, but it points to a divide in many people’s minds: do we want a Bond who has been traumatised by his past or not?

Time to get out

The idea that the past is catching up with Bond is made manifest right from the pre-titles car chase, with the villains’ black Alfa Romeos representing the past he is continually striving to outrun. Although we don’t know it until right at the end of the sequence, Bond has in his car boot the last human link back to the immediate past, Mr White, and the unidentified henchmen will stop at nothing to get White (their employer?) back. As it turns out, stopping at nothing is not enough.

With Bond in the driving seat, they don’t stand a chance. But whereas we might usually be expected to whoop with triumph at the end of a pre-titles sequence, marvelling at Bond’s skill and hair-breadth escape, it’s presented here as something of an anticlimax. When I first saw the film I was incredibly let down by this sequence. It’s only now I can see that this is probably intentional: right from the start, the film frustrates our ability to feel any catharsis. And this continues right to the very end, with the most downbeat ending since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is almost impossible to resist with Quantum of Solace. Jumping around all over the place comes with the territory. How much of this is because the film was rushed into production and affected by a writers’ strike and how much of it is intentional?

In the past, I have routinely placed Quantum of Solace towards the bottom end of my rankings of Bond films and that is almost exclusively to do with the editing. I don’t usually bring my personal feelings about the films into these queer re-views because they’re immaterial. My aim is to see these films again through queer lenses. It doesn’t matter if some are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others as films. But in Quantum of Solace’s case, more than in any other Bond film, the form does affect the content. The rapid-editing of the action sequences is undeniably too fast for comfort and a ‘flaw’ of the film. But maybe it’s the whole point. Admittedly, it’s an expensive point to make. Lord knows how many Aston Martins they got through in the opening chase and there is a part of me that really wishes I had a clearer sense of what the hell is going on. One can’t help feel that Cubby Broccoli, with his dictum that all of the money must be seen on the screen, would be turning in his grave. Yes, we see lots of expensive action but it goes by so quickly we’re not sure what we have actually seen. It can leave us feeling a bit cheated, especially in the boat chase sequence which is robbed of its pay off (what does Bond actually do with that hook?).

The editing IS impressionistic. But what is the impression director Marc Forster wants us to have? Forster famously said he intended the film to be like a bullet and watching Quantum of Solace can feel like being on the receiving end of one: you don’t know what’s hit you until it’s all over.

A plot thread through Casino Royale was the use of ‘Ellipsis’ as a code word and I’m surprised it doesn’t make a reappearance at some point in Quantum of Solace. Not only are the two films joined at the hip in terms of plot continuity, but - of the two - Quantum of Solace is far more elliptical in terms of its delivery. Most films are elliptical: its rare for a film to unfold in real time, like Hitchcock’s queer classic Rope does. In a Bond film, we often see him take off in a plane and come in to land but we don’t have to sit through the entire flight with him. The difference with Quantum of Solace is that it is just as elliptical within scenes as much as it is between scenes.

The word ellipsis comes from the Greek verb to ‘leave out’ - an intentional act. If we take this as a starting point - that Quantum of Solace’s elliptical style is entirely intentional - this leads us to question: what is the intent?

Flight or fight

It’s my contention that several of the bold stylistic choices are intended to mirror Bond’s fight or flight state.

Jumping back to the pre-titles for a second, the preference for close ups over wide coverage of the scene make us experience it far more subjectively than we are used to. Bond may be in the driving seat of his soon-to-be-written-off Aston Martin (another one!) but it’s Bond’s trauma, transmuted into anxious rage, which is driving him. And he’s taking us along for the ride.

In several of the sequences - including the car chase, the boat chase and the final hotel assault - the cacophonous sound effects and music cut out almost entirely. I think these absences (another intentional ‘leaving out’) are intended to give us an insight into what it might be like to be in the midst of events that could lead to post-traumatic stress.

When under stress, the higher-functioning parts of our brains can temporarily shut down to allow us to react to threatening stimuli more effectively: to help us fly away or stay and fight. One of the parts of our brains which can shut down is memory. Although I am fortunate not to have experienced more than a handful of events in my life where I have been at risk of being seriously injured or killed, each time I have struggled to recall the events in detail. Shutting down our memories can help us to focus in the moment, when we need our brain power for basic survival. But a consequence is that people with post-traumatic stress can sometimes struggle to distinguish between the past and present, with threats from the past feeling like they are happening in the present moment.

Although we typically associate post-traumatic stress with people who have been in combat situations, there is growing evidence that it is particularly prevalent among LGBTQ+ people, whether or not they have experienced physical violence, in the form of a homophobic attack for instance. The trauma of ‘merely’ growing up as queer can be enough. Post-traumatic stress is often viewed as resulting from a shocking one off event but it can also be triggered by repeated occurrences of less immediately shocking, but cumulatively traumatic, events.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists identify the three most common symptoms of post-traumatic stress as: flashbacks and nightmares in which you relive events; avoidance and numbing (distracting yourself, e.g. by throwing yourself into your work); being hypervigilant. All of these are depicted in Quantum of Solace. Bond is shown to be constantly on the look out for threats, always distracting himself with the next objective, and he has sleeping problems because he cannot stop reliving the past.

The editing is especially effective at conveying how his focus is continually shifting. Luckily for Bond, we know that his training will reflexively kick in and he will emerge from the pre-titles car chase - and all of the other staccato action sequences - unscathed. Many real people with post-traumatic stress are not as fortunate of course and, left untreated, the effects can be life-altering, even deadly.

Looking death in the face

A curious thing happened when I rewatched Quantum of Solace to reassess it for this article: I enjoyed the film a lot more than I ever had done before. This was in no small part to me having to pause it every few minutes to jot down my thoughts. The pauses gave my brain time to process what I had seen and heard. I actually found it quite an affecting experience, even crying on a couple of occasions.

Now, I love a good cry at a movie, but I rarely cry at Bond films: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Casino Royale are the exceptions. What I find most affecting about Quantum of Solace is Bond goes everywhere geographically but, for most of the film, doesn’t get anywhere psychologically. While it’s one of the most destination-hopping Bond films (a sensation reinforced by the ornate title cards announcing each location), it shows us a Bond who is pretty much stuck on autopilot, going through the motions, unaware of the big picture and largely oblivious to the ramifications of his actions.

His objective is unclear; he just needs to keep going, one foot in front of the other. More than once, he accidentally stumbles into or onto the next clue which leads him, ultimately, to a showdown which he knows will make little difference in the grand scheme of things. It’s the closest we have to a cinematic depiction of Bond attempting to overcome what Ian Fleming called ‘accidie’: not caring about anyone or anything. Since Ancient times accidie has been synonymous with depression. Sometimes people refer to it as ‘spiritual suicide’ - something that afflicted many of Fleming’s most memorable villains (Mr Big, Goldfinger, Blofeld) and Fleming himself. Bond himself is no stranger to it either: in the Quantum of Solace short story, hearing about the everyday cruelties human beings are capable of causes him re-evaluate his own life’s work as meaningless “violent dramatics” and makes him dread that the next morning will only present him with “boredom and futility”. One doesn’t imagine Bond manages to get a lot of sleep that night. Although the plot of the short story is not used in the film, some of the ideas are translated to the screen.

The 19th Century philosopher, an early existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard saw accidie in people who, like Bond, refused to be their true selves. Perhaps Kierkegaard saw this in himself: he was himself gay but only revealed it in his journals. He knew first hand how living a double life can take its toll.

One of the first academics to study Fleming, Ann S. Boyd, wrote a whole book about Fleming’s obsession with the deadly sins and devoted much of it to discussing Bond’s real arch enemy: the potentially lethal apathy of accidie. She noted that this was an often overlooked element of Fleming’s work and persuasively argued that it was the real subject of the Bond series as a whole. Although Boyd was a fan of the films (going to see Goldfinger is what inspired her to write her book), she didn’t find much to write about accidie in relation to the cinematic versions. She would have had a field day with Quantum of Solace.

Towards the end of her book, Boyd concluded:

“There is only one possible antidote, therefore, for the sin of accidie - the slap into awareness by the real encounter with death. It is for this reason that the spirit of apathy and boredom disappears during wartime and other occasions of crisis when men are forced to re-evaluate the fundamental premises for their existence.”

Boyd cited Bond’s famous haiku from the novel of You Only Live Twice to show Fleming was well aware of this:

You only live twice:

Once when you are born,

And once when you look death in the face.

Had she been writing about Quantum of Solace, Boyd might have cited the part of the climax where Bond appears to resign himself to death, preparing to shoot Camille before turning the gun on himself (or attempting to kill them both with the same bullet). It’s the closest we get to the ending of Fleming’s Moonraker, with Bond preparing to sacrifice his life by lighting his last cigarette under the exhaust of the rocket intended to destroy London. The difference in Quantum of Solace is that Bond knows his suicide will not change anything, aside from substituting a slower, more painful death from being incinerated with a comparatively quick and merciful gunshot to the head. The scene takes us uncomfortably into the territory of suicide ideation. Fortunately, at the last minute, he sights a means of escape. But we are led to believe that the experience of looking death in the face may have changed him in some way.

Desert Places

Perhaps my favourite articulation of what it feels like to experience accidie is in the poem Desert Places by Robert Frost. I’d be surprised if Fleming wasn’t aware of Frost’s work - they at least shared a UK publisher (Jonathan Cape). Several lines into one of Frost’s most famous poems, which he wrote during a bout of depression in 1933, he establishes that he is “too absent-spirited to count”. The poem concludes with these lines:

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

While Frost uses the ‘desert’ as a metaphor for the terrifying blankness inside him, it’s fitting that Quantum of Solace’s final act takes place in a literal desert. The landscape - which, aside from the hotel in the middle of nowhere, is barren - reflecting Bond’s psychology.

Bond is almost dead inside - or almost entirely cold-blooded like the reptile who slinks across the screen. Almost.

As he and Camille prepare to launch their attack on Perla de Las Dunas, Bond asks her if she has ever killed someone. When she stays silent he slips into the role of the seasoned hitman, as much to reassure her as offer her practical advice:

“Your training will tell you that when the adrenaline kicks in you should compensate. But part of you is not gonna believe the training because this kill is personal. Take a deep breath. You only need one shot. Make it count.”

It’s a tender scene for a Bond film. Contrast this scene with the equivalent second act transition from Casino Royale: the post-poker dinner-table conversation between Bond and Vesper quoted above. Bond is less blase about killing than he was before, especially if the kill is personal. He’s acknowledging to another human being that he is bothered by his job.

The film’s final sequence takes place in a desert landscape of another kind: a brutalist Russian housing complex, covered in snow. This is introduced with another crucifix shape, implying Bond may be able to salvage something approaching absolution.

As it happens, Robert Frost’s poem opens with a description of “Snow falling and night falling” and this is what we see on screen as Bond waits to catch Vesper’s boyfriend in the act of honey trapping another female agent. Faced with the choice of killing him, Bond decides to let him live. Does this mean Bond chooses duty over his inconsolable rage? Has he pulled out of his soul-destroying nosedive? Is Bond beginning to heal? Does his discarding of Vesper’s necklace mean he has found closure? The finished film is elliptical enough for us to make up our own minds and is all the better for it.

A more obviously cathartic scene to follow this was shot but, wisely, removed. It didn’t even appear on the DVD extras, despite the producers saying it would. In the scene, Bond confronts Mr White and Guy Haines in what looks like a Whitehall office. Directors Marc Forster felt it “took you in another emotional direction” and lopped it off the film.

The scene included the iconic line “The name’s Bond, James Bond.” which does not appear in the completed Quantum of Solace. Its absence leaves us with the feeling that we’re missing something. It robs us of our confidence, our surety, our sense that all is right with the world. Although Bond tells M “I never left”, he has been disingenuous throughout the whole film. Some take the ending to indicate the slate has been wiped clean. To me, it suggests he still has miles to go, and promises to keep before he sleeps.

Allies: Friends of 00-Dorothy

Like a whirlpool dragging ships to their doom, Bond’s self-destructive spiral draws everyone into danger. Felix Leiter plays the long game, edging ever closer to the vortex. It takes until over two thirds into Quantum of Solace for Felix to meet Bond face to face. In the meantime, Felix has been doing what he can behind the scenes to protect Bond from the machinations of his superior, Beam, who is in league with Greene. When they do eventually meet in a backstreet bar, they immediately rekindle their bromance from Casino Royale.

The sparks fly in a provocative scene, fizzing with sublimated competitive sexuality. It’s Bond who takes the lead, getting right down to it by questioning the US interest in South America: “I was just wondering what South America would look like if nobody gave a damn about coke or communism. It’s always impressed me the way you boys have carved this placed up.” Bond chooses to infantalise Americans as “boys”, casting Leiter - as his nation’s representative - in a submissive role. Leiter’s wittily retorts: “I’ll take that as a compliment coming from a Brit”, suggesting Bond should feel just as ashamed for his own country’s not-exactly-altruistic colonial adventuring. The reality is that Leiter is referring to distant history (everything up to the decline of the British Empire in the first half of the 20th Century) whereas Bond is referencing more recent abuses of power. So is Leiter, whose country came to dominate the world in the latter half of the 20th Century while Bond’s faded from the world stage, the submissive one after all, or is it Bond?

Sadly, we never get a chance to find out as the men’s conversational coitus is interrupted by an armed squad of CIA troops. Felix’s final words to Bond are “move your ass”. Like Vesper in Casino Royale, we can safely assume that Felix noticed.

This scene moves so quickly that it’s easy to miss some scintillating homoerotic dialogue. Earlier on, Bond keeps up his theme, accusing Felix of not playing for the “right side” and telling him that he would “lie down with anybody”. Felix responds “Including you, brother. Including you.” The implication may be that this is brotherly love, but these scenes are the closest we get to the parts of Fleming’s books where Felix finds a flimsy pretext to spend the night in Bond’s room.

We’re on more familial territory with M, whose presence is more maternal than in Casino Royale - albeit a mum who is more often than not furious with her tearaway son.

Although she is often given masculine traits, here this is balanced with some stereotypically feminine behaviours, including putting on her face cream while drawing a bath and talking with Tanner. The script also identifies the off screen voice in this scene as her husband. We saw a man in her bed in Casino Royale but her marital status is not confirmed in dialogue until Skyfall, by which point she is a widow. I’m not sure how I feel about M being married. Part of me wants her to have eschewed conventional relationships and forged her own path, having relations with whoever she chooses whenever. It would perhaps fit the character better to have her, like Bond, not attached to a single person.

M’s office has undergone a radical makeover. Its open plan, brightly-lit, glass-sheeted appearance suggests an intelligence service which is more transparent than the film’s murkier organisations (Quantum, the CIA) who choose to operate in the shadows. Then again, there are aesthetic similarities with the Perla de Las Dunas hotel which is Greene’s respectably-fronted hideout. Perhaps MI6’s transparent look is all virtue signalling and they’re just as compromised as the rest. One of the few figures we can trust is Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff who is quite sassy in his Rory Kinnear guise. When a forensic technician risks launching into a lengthy lecture, which he knows M won’t be receptive to, he cuts him off: “Not in the mood.” In the novels, Tanner is one of Bond’s few friends, a role which this Tanner will increasingly occupy over the subsequent Craig films.

Mathis shares therapist duties with M, shouldering the responsibility of bringing Bond back to some semblance of humanity. Crucially, Mathis is one of the people Bond has hurt in his past. Bond coming to Mathis’ house seeking forgiveness hints there may be some part of him worth saving. Although Mathis’ return is short-lived, he plays a pivotal role in the story and the development of Bond’s character. Bond continually talks past characters in Quantum of Solace, refusing to give a straight answer to their questions. Even when Mathis is dying and he’s asking Bond “Do we forgive each other?”, Bond refuses to give a direct answer. Instead, he continues to beat himself up: “I shouldn't have left you alone.” Mathis, however, does not leave the matter alone. His last words are: “Forgive her, forgive yourself”. He hits the nail on the head: Vesper’s betrayal cuts deep but the the only way he will be able to move past it is to stare down his own shame.

Much has been made of Bond dumping Mathis’ body in a dumpster. When Camille asks “Is that how you treat your friends?” Bond responds: “He wouldn’t care”. Ann S. Boyd notes in her book (see above) that the deadly apathy ‘accidie’ which afflicts Bond takes its name from the Greek word for ‘carelessness’; specifically used to condemn people who neglected to bury the dead. While I don’t buy that Bond is behaving callously (he is visibly moved and he cradles Mathis in his arms tenderly), the scene is intended to show how close to rock-bottoming Bond has got. Would Bond in a mentally healthier frame of mind pause to bury a fallen ally? Mathis’ figure position forms another crucifix: another of Bond’s sacrifices.

In turns out that Mathis was never the character’s real name. Perhaps this is a nod to the character - French in the novel of Casino Royale - being played by an actor from Italy. Mathis is presented as probably Italian, living a life of luxury with his partner Gemma in Tuscany. He’s the latest in Bond’s long line of older male ‘daddies’ (see also: Kerim Bey, Marc-Ange Draco, Columbo, Bernard Lee’s M). Like Bond, Mathis has a chemical dependency. In addition to quaffing cheap wine, he relies on drugs to get him through the day: “I have pills for everything. Some make you taller. Some make you forget”. They may also help in the bedroom (if we take ‘taller’ to mean that some of his tablets have a distinctive blue hue).

Shady Characters: Villains

Mr White: The first thing you should know about us… is that we have people everywhere.

Sociologist Georg Simmel identified two types of secret societies: those whose existence is completely unknown by those outside the society and those whose existence is known about but the membership of that society is not. Across the film, Quantum goes from being the first type to the second.

Shortly after the title sequence, Mr White goads M and Bond by telling them “You really don't know anything about us”. He doesn’t even refer to Quantum, the secret organisation to which he belongs, by name. The word Quantum is first (over)heard as Bond listens in to their meeting during an opera performance, where he also ‘outs’ several of its members, including a former government minister, a spy turned telecom giant and an envoy to the UK Prime Minister.

Is Quantum a queer organisation? Despite queer societies’ obvious need for secrecy, we know of many examples which have existed throughout the centuries. One of the most notable was founded by George Cecil Ives, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde who outlived the more famous writer by 50 years. Although he is not a household name (like so many forgotten queer heroes) Ives can be seen a very early gay rights activist. Having accepted his homosexuality (to a tolerable extent at least: see the discussion of ‘process not event’, above) he set about campaigning to end the oppression homosexuals faced at the end of the 19th Century. He was campaigning for equal marriage more than a hundred years ago! According to the university where his papers are held:

By 1897, Ives understood that the "Cause" would not be accepted openly in society and must therefore have a means of underground communication. Thus he created and founded the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals. The name, Order of Chaeronea, was inspired by the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC when the 300 members of the Sacred Band of Thebes (composed entirely of friends and lovers) were slaughtered by the army of Philip of Macedonia. Ives and other members dated letters and other materials based on this date, so that 1899 would be written as C2237. An elaborate system of rituals, ceremonies, a service of initiation, seals, codes, and passwords were used by the members. The Secret Society became a worldwide organization and Ives took advantage of every opportunity to spread the word about the "Cause."

An international secret organisation employing underground communication and coded exchanges? Sounds a lot like Quantum to me. That they choose to meet in a very public place to conduct their clandestine business also gives the impression they are cruising each other, like Bond and Saunders at the classical concert in The Living Daylights. This impression is heightened when Bond intrudes on their conversation: “I really think you people should find a better place to meet.” “You people” is often used as derogatory way of referring to a group of people who have something undesirable in common. Bond could even be seen as policing this space, almost as if he is breaking up a gay cottage.

Ives’ Order of Chaeronea was mostly made up of gay men, although lesbians were also allowed in. Lesbians have had their own secret societies and separatist communities of course, but the one we see depicted in Quantum of Solace is mostly homosocial, reflecting the gender imbalance of societies like the Order of Chaeronea. It also reflects the lack of gender diversity in most real-life corporate boardrooms.

Many Bond villains are not what they seem but Dominic Greene takes hypocrisy to extremes. His lends his very apt name (which we presume to be real) to the philanthropic environmental organisation of which he’s the boss. Greene Planet purports to buying up swathes of land for ecological preservation but it’s really putting the strangehold on natural resources. Many Bond villain plots have felt far-fetched in their days but which have since, with hindsight, become alarmingly prescient. But Greene’s is especially pernicious because of the efforts he goes to in order to misdirect everyone’s attention from the real prize: water, not oil. Even for a Bond villain, he is exceptionally two-faced.

Director Marc Forster was determined that there be no external indication that Greene was villainous. By rejecting facial scars and the like Greene is consciously aligned with the villains we find in the real world: CEOs of corrupt corporations who will go to sociopathic lengths to turn a profit. Who knows what traumas lurk in these souls that drive them to do such horrible things!

The true extent of Greene’s double-dealings (and by implication, the corruption of the US government) are revealed when he plots with Gregory Beam, the CIA Section Chief for South America. Quantum of Solace repeatedly encourages us to see past the obvious and distrust those who purport to be doing good deeds. It’s the most anti-establishment Bond film of all, insisting that we should always be on our guard, especially when ‘good’ presents a friendly, co-operative face.

No one looks like a criminal in Quantum of Solace - and that’s the point. Can any of us spot a criminal in real life? The scene where Bond identifies the members of Quantum by taking photographs of their faces and sending them to Tanner to run through the computer has some very scary real-life resonances.

In 2016, a Chinese study claimed to be able that it was possible to train a machine to detect criminals based on their facial appearance. The study hinged on the extremely dodgy idea that there is correlation between face shape and criminality but, they claimed, the machines were very accurate. Another study, published a year later by none other than Stanford University, claimed that computer algorithms were very accurate at identifying people’s sexual orientation, far more accurate than people are. Researchers claimed that “consistent with the prenatal hormone theory of sexual orientation, gay men and women tended to have gender-atypical facial morphology, expression, and grooming styles” and while they acknowledged that “companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits” they were adamant that this is not a good thing: “our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women”. LGBTQ+ civil rights groups were understandably furious at this ‘junk science’ when it was first announced. But if the science is to be believed, especially in those 70+ countries where homosexuality is still criminalised, the implications are terrifying.

I don’t for a moment wish to conflate criminality with homosexuality and, unlike many other Bond villains, I don’t imagine Greene provokes identification from many, if any, queer viewers. He’s a truly despicable character. But it’s interesting that he has been created to be someone who does not ping on anyone’s criminal radar/gaydar. He hides his secret identity in plain sight.

In private, Greene’s villainy becomes quickly apparent. His feelings of insecurity (“There's nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than friends talking behind my back...”) manifest in sexualised violence towards others. With pride, he begins to tell Camille - his latest potential victim - about his first: one of his mother’s piano students he had a “crush” on when he was 15. We never hear what he did to her with an “iron” but our mind fills in the blanks: another effective use of ellipsis. It’s not just women he threatens sexually. Later, when the even more flagrantly reprehensible rapist General Medrano initially refuses to sign over Bolivia’s water rights, Greene convinces him by playing on his castration anxiety: “If you decide not to sign, you will wake up with your balls in your mouth and your willing replacement standing over you.” Greene may not have the scarred or unusual appearance of a Bond villain, but Bond villains have been threatening the removal of genitalia since the beginning. By this point, Greene has come to fully inhabit the mould. Like Bond, the ugliness is in his very soul. Unlike Bond, he is not redeemed.

On reflection, Greene’s death is one of the most satisfying in any Bond film. Yet again, an ellipsis requires us to fill in the blanks. Bond paints just enough of a picture: like him, we imagine Greene getting so thirsty that he will consume motor oil, filling his lungs with the cloying substance. Just desserts (or deserts!) for the death of Agent Fields and all of the others he and his organisation have used and abused.

What to make of utterly ineffectual henchman Elvis, who regularly gets humiliated and gets no rewards for his pains, being blown up after being left to cover Greene’s escape? I wouldn’t want to describe him as ‘effeminate’ for fear of offending any women and I prefer not to think of him as queer-coded because he gives us a bad name. This isn’t femme shaming: Elvis is just completely inept. Is he simply too gay to function? A 2015 article on Gay Star News speculated that a “saucy smile” to a fellow henchman during the opera scene might make him one of us.

Add to this, the closeness to his mother, questionable style choices and his preference for ‘girly’ drinks (is that a pina colada he’s drinking at the Greene Planet fundraiser?) and I’m inclined to think he is supposed to be gay. Can we have some better representation please?

You go gurrrrrls!

Although she never appears on screen, Vesper Lynd is undeniably a main character in Quantum of Solace. While Bond has her necklace to keep her memory alive, we have her music.

Outside of the Bond theme and Barry’s 007 theme, musical continuity is a rare treat in a Bond film. Vesper’s theme being reused to represent past trauma is almost unique in the series. There have been brief reprisals of main melodies: a cleaner whistling Goldfinger in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; the desk clearout scene in the same film using snatches of Underneath the Mango Tree, From Russia With Love and Thunderball; a bar of Nobody Does It Better being used as the keypad code in For Your Eyes Only. But Quantum of Solace marks the only time (up to this point) we get the return of a theme for a character other than Bond.

David Arnold’s Vesper motif from Casino Royale reappears whenever Bond dwells on the past. And because Bond rarely talks about his feelings, the music says what is often left unspoken. The motif reappears throughout the second half of the film during these scenes: the six Martinis on the plane; Mathis’ death scene where he talks about forgiving Vesper; Bond and Camille’s conversation about trauma after landing in the sinkhole; the end of the sequence where they take the bus out of the Bolivian desert. It’s also the last thing we hear before the gunbarrel/end credits kick in. As we are shown Vesper’s necklace lying in the snow, her melody plays out but doesn’t resolve musically. David Arnold told me: “it is unresolved….. that film ended musically with unfinished business… on purpose of course”. The same piano note repeats - the musical equivalent of ellipsis points: To be continued…

Vesper colours everything we - through Bond - experience in Quantum of Solace, including his interactions with the other female characters.

Bond: My sources tell me you're Bolivian Secret Service, or used to be, and that you infiltrated Greene's organisation by having sex with him.

Camille: That offends you?

Bond: No, not in the slightest.

Although she rarely needs rescuing, Camille Montes kicks Bond’s saviour complex into high gear. Her attempt to shoot him on their first meeting makes her more endearing in his eyes (compare, for instance, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s Tracy threatening Bond with his gun in his hotel room). But, uncharacteristically, after he’s ‘rescued’ her from Medrano’s boat, he unceremoniously dumps her unconscious body into the arms of a jetty attendant.

It’s often said that Bond and some Girls are ‘two of a kind’ but for Bond and Camille it’s the real deal. As well as both of them being extremely capable, they are both, in Greene’s insensitive words, “damaged goods”. The two go on to develop a very intimate relationship of a kind unique to the Bond series: that of mutual sponsors, guiding each other through overcoming trauma.

Although Camille pursues her own mission it mirrors Bond’s own, both being rooted in trauma. In Camille’s case, it’s the rape of her mother and sister and murder of her whole family by General Medrano, from which she bears the physical as well as mental scars. Like Bond often does, Camille is prepared to use sex to accomplish her mission, something which Bond is refreshingly unjudgemental about.

Reinforcing their compatibility, the final assault on the hotel cross-cuts between Bond and Camille as they complete their complementary objectives, Bond taking Green, Camille killing Medrano. Although Camille accomplishes her mission, the fatal shot is heard but not seen (another ellipsis!), cleverly robbing us of some of the catharsis we might otherwise expect from watching an unrepentant rapist get rubbed out.

Just as we have experienced the action sequences up until this point through Bond’s eyes and ears, here we get to go inside Camille’s head. As she tries to shrink herself down to child-like proportions, we hear on the soundtrack a child screaming. Camille is reliving her childhood trauma.

So much are we in Camille’s head that it took me several viewings of the film to see this scene through Bond’s eyes and notice the parallel with the justly famous sequence in Casino Royale where a traumatised Vesper takes a shower fully-clothed.

Through working alongside Camille, Bond comes to realise that the dead don’t care about vengeance and no matter how many people he kills, it won’t bring Vesper back. When she expresses how empty she feels after killing Medrano (“He’s dead. Now what?”) Bond suggests a course of action which might shake her out of her accidie (throwing herself into her work, to give her some purpose). She knows she cannot suggest a similar course of action to Bond: his work is the problem. But she does hit the nail on the head - or rather, strokes it tenderly. While running her hand down Bond’s cheek, she articulates what he can never say aloud himself: “I wish I could set you free. But your prison is in there.”

By the time they kiss, he has come to realise she is his positive mirror image and he doesn’t want to shatter it by pursuing things in the usual fashion. Bond pulls away, giving us arguably the least heteronormative ending of any Bond film. Conversely, you could argue they have a relationship which runs deeper than a sexual one. Either way, it’s fascinatingly unconventional.

Anyone thinking that Bond has become a monk (or, god forbid, gay!) as well as a hitman, need look no further than Agent (Strawberry) Fields. She could be seen as the uncomplicated sex object turned sacrificial victim but she’s far more. Despite her svelte screen time, Gemma Arterton’s empowering portrayal of the character is a fan favourite. While the part of her name is apt (she is a FIELD agent after all), eliding her first name tells us she is keeping some of her self to herself. Bond Girls often have silly names and Fields refuses to be infantilised in this way. And it’s good that she sticks to her guns because, on first meeting her, Bond and Mathis talk about her behind her back like two immature school boys. After she’s threatened to arrest him Mathis tells Bond “I think she has handcuffs”. Bond’s response (“I do hope so”) suggests he might still be open to a spot of role play, despite his nonconsensual kink trauma with Le Chiffre.

Bond asking Fields to help him find the stationery in their hotel room is the most perfunctory pre-amble to sex possibe. Sensing their mutual attraction, he can’t even be bothered to come up with a seductive double entendre. It puts them on a level playing field: she’s under no obligation and could easily just walk away. She knows they’re just going to have sex and there will no strings attached.

Bond is no stranger to random hook ups but we rarely get to see the beginning AND the end: from meeting, to sleeping together, to post-coital conversation. Think of the pre-titles of The Spy Who Loved Me, which shows Bond already under the blankets. We don’t know how he got there or tempted the woman into having sex with him. Or recall any number of scenes which cut straight from seduction to Bond and the Girl fully clothed - or Bond already back on the mission, having loved and left her.

In contrast, here we are presented with the beginning and the end in very quick succession (most of the sex itself gets elided). This compression might cause the scene to resonate disproportionately with gay men. Although we live in an age of apps where sex is practically available at the push of a button to anyone, the use of dating apps is especially prevalent between gay men. While being careful not to stereotype gay men as more promiscuous than straight men, Matthew Todd observes that another consequence of a lifetime of self-shaming (see Bond discussion, above) is that “We seem to communicate only by having sex”.

Field briefly remarks that she is angry at herself for going to bed with Bond but it’s unclear if she is being sincere or not. When she agrees to go with Bond to a party he tells Fields he will “fix” her outfit, perhaps another echo of Casino Royale: in their hotel prior to heading to the Casino, Bond picked out a dress for Vesper to wear.

Perhaps this is why, after Fields’ is found drowned in oil, Bond dwells on her so much. In the montage where he is stripped of his weapons and taken into MI6 custody, we see Fields’ corpse superimposed over the scene to suggest Bond is reliving yet another trauma: yet another woman he has failed to protect.

Camp (as Dr Christmas Jones)

Whether you like the title song or not, you have to admire how closely Another Way To Die complements the film. Lyrically, it captures what’s going on inside Bond’s mind. In an almost constant state of fight or flight, Bond perceives threats everywhere:

A door left open

A woman walking by

A drop in the water

A look in your eye

A phone on the table

A man on your side

Or someone that you think that you can trust

It's just

Another way to die

The lyrics also imply that convey the idea that Bond is his own worst enemy:

Another man there he stands right behind you

Looking in the mirror

It fits that it’s a duet: I’ve always seen Jack White and Alicia Keys representing Bond and Camille.

Another song was written for the film by David Arnold and Don Black, the song that became No Good About Goodbye, recorded by Shirley Bassey. Arnold told me that their song was only finished after Quantum of Solace was completed, when he knew it was not going to be used in the film. Nevertheless, the main melody from No Good About Goodbye is the main melody of the score to Quantum of Solace, although Arnold did incorporate what he could of the White/Keys song into his score. (In his words, “it’s reasonably present” and I can definitely hear the White/Keys song’s influence in the score’s instrumentation and rhythms.)

Lyrically, the rather pessimistic No Good About Goodbye is all about past trauma and the words work in a queer context:

My heart is no good at pretending

It knows that the hurts never ending

The film features two sequences where we are invited to draw parallels between large scale public spectacles and the more private, violent events happening at the same time. The first is the chase through across the rooftops of Siena, which is crosscut with a real-life horse race with medieval origins: The Palio. Perhaps because of the overloading of visual information, or the juxtaposition of something elevated and cultural with something which is literally taking place underground, even in the sewers, I find this sequence joyously Camp. As Susan Sontag famously observed: pure Camp is unintentional.

The second Camp extravaganza is the Tosca opera sequence, widely acclaimed as a highlight of the film. Why Tosca? There are some similarities between Bond’s story and the story of Puccini’s opera: with its love triangle between two men and one fiercely-independent woman you could recast Bond, Vesper and her boyfriend in the opera’s main roles. Musical scholar Marcia J. Citron has analysed the sequence in depth and persuasively argues it is used to encapsulate the “subjective isolation of the protagonist”, with Bond detached from all of those enjoying the opera. Bond as outsider once again. As Mr White waspishly remarks: “Well, Tosca isn’t for everyone.”

Interestingly, right at the start of the sequence, we are presented with a montage of the opera performers getting ready. This invites us to see everything that follows as a performance as well, especially when we see an actress having a fake scar applied to her face, mirroring the scars that adorn Daniel Craig throughout the film.

Performativity is often intimately connected with Camp. According to queer scholar Jackson Moore, Camp can also help to heal shame: “Camp is a queer object that facilitates the healing of the shameful wound afflicting performative identities.” Quite how Camp turns shame into pride is “alchemy” according to the American Comparative Literature Association. However, it happens I’d agree that there’s some truth in it. A lot of gay people who feel very shameful are also the most hostile to Camp. I found that embracing my own Camp aspects made me feel empowered. A man intentionally behaving in an exagerrated, non gender stereotypical manner is a provocation to a world where such behaviour is stigmatised. It says: I don’t care what you think about me. You can’t make me ashamed anymore.

Casting director Debbie McWilliams sure knows how to pick ‘em! There are several Hot Bond Boys With Bit Parts here, including the traitorous MI6 agent Mitchell, a very handsome man in the crowd of The Palio sequence, the very buff opera house employee whose tuxedo Bond steals (another Craig lookalike) and Guy Haines’ bodyguard (played by stunt performer Derek Lea).

Although he is an important presence in the film, Vesper’s boyfriend Yusuf Kabira (portrayed by actor Simon Kassianides) doesn’t get much screen time but makes an impression. You can totally see what Vesper saw in him. In real life, honey traps were a favoured method of the KGB, used to ensnare male and female intelligence operatives, including queer ones.

The Campest element of any Bond film, the gunbarrel, is left until the very end of the film. It’s a controversial move which does rather jar (intentionally?) with the otherwise downbeat closing scene. It underscores the director’s stated intention to make the film like a bullet. Quantum of Solace feels like we’re in the firing line from start to finish.

Queer verdict: 006 (out of 007)

By constantly frustrating our desire for cathartic resolution, the film presents us with an experience which many of us find relatable - even if we’re not jet-setting superspies. If we’re to overcome shame and find our own quantum of solace, we will have to work at it. Like Bond does, this means confronting some uncomfortable truths: that life doesn’t stay fixed for very long; that we all have to adapt to change; that even after we make big changes, our identities will still be in flux to an extent; that we have to forgive others who wronged us; that we must learn to be kinder to ourselves.

Acknowledgements/further reading

Thank you to Lotte for supporting another Bond film underdog and everyone else who encouraged me to spend so much time in the company of Quantum of Solace, especially Steve Spring and Alblex.

I wholeheartedly recommend Matthew Todd's book Straight Jacket. It helped me give shape to my thoughts about gay shame and find the language to write about it. It also contains lots of useful advice. Even if you’re not queer, it helps you to understand why we feel so much shame.

For more on post-traumatic stress, check out the Royal College of Psychiatry website (link in the main body above) and the resources from the charity Mind: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd-and-complex-ptsd/about-ptsd/

Although I didn’t end up using it in the article, this is a fascinating story about a soldier in the British army experiencing PTSD because of both his gayness and his combat experiences: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-46295439.amp

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts: talk to someone! There are links to organisations throughout the world in my queer re-view of You Only Live Twice (scroll to the bottom): https://www.licencetoqueer.com/blog/queer-re-view-you-only-live-twice

If you’ve not had enough Quantum of Solace yet, this is a great video essay by @TWANEpod and which also takes as its starting point that this is a film about overcoming trauma (although not from a specifically queer point of view).

Queer re-view: Quantum of Solace