Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

This is a film about relationships, relationships which flow over and between Bacon's life and work. I come away from the film knowing much more than I ever knew and felt about Bacon and his work, and also the period in which he worked. I would liked to have seen much more of the famous (or should that be infamous) "Colony Room" where Bacon done his drinking and socialzing. Daniel Craig is spot on as the East End spiv and petite crook. Tilda Swinton plays the hilariously foul-mouthed Muriel Belcher and I am sure that Belcher would make make a good central character in another film. The film is not about Bacon's paintings, but the man himself. His relationships his world. London could never ever been as seedy as this but what a great place to search out life.

This is a fearless, eerie film about the relationship between British painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) and his handsome, unsophisticated lover George Dyer (the new James Bond, Daniel Craig). The destructive affair is told from Bacon's and Dyer's perspectives with unsettling images strongly directed by John Maybury. Their story is somewhat like Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell's (told by Stephen Frears in "Prick Up Your Ears"), and the emotional bond between the intellectual artist and the rustic lover reminds me of Truman Capote and Perry Smith (coincidentally, Daniel Craig played Smith in "Infamous") - except that "Love is the Devil" is visceral, surreal and dark like Francis Bacon's world was, and Bennett Miller's acclaimed "Capote", a good, albeit overrated, film with a spectacular performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, was more concerned about being elegant and palatable than being closer to the truth. Bacon and Capote were talented, troubled men, with huge ego issues, who were partly responsible for their respective lover's (Dyer)/ protégé's/victim? (Smith) ruin - and, later, for their own.

Had John Maybury been like Bennett Miller and turned Bacon's life into an 'elegant' flick, we'd have an Oscar contender here; thankfully he did not, and we got a brave little film that is hard to watch because it's such a visceral painting of an unsettling world. Jacobi and Craig are phenomenal, and the always fantastic Tilda Swinton has a small part as one of Bacon's friends. Well done, Mr. Maybury. 8/10.

Love is the Devil is amazingly rich in character and visuals. Just like Bacon's paintings, it is abstract, provocative, dark, and cruel, yet intensely mesmorizing. Maybury couldn't have picked a better actor than Derek Jacobi to portray the very disturbed Bacon. Jacobi is so good, I wondered whether this was just acting or the real thing. One of my favorite scene was Bacon grooming himself, using ammonia cleanser to brush his teeth and curling his eyelashes with his saliva. Neither could I ever forget the countless enigmatic facial expressions Jacobi delivers. One of the best films I've seen in years.

This movie is a portrait of British painter Francis Bacon (played by Derek Jacobi) in the 1960s. In the beginning of the movie, a young man named Dyer (Daniel Craig), intent on burglarizing Bacon's flat, has a misstep and falls into his art studio. Bacon approaches him and...asks him to come to bed with him! Dyer agrees and this is the beginning of their tumultuous romantic and complex sexual relationship.

This movie is really a focus on a relationship between people that are polar opposites. Bacon is a slightly mad artistic genius in his 50s, with snobby pretentious friends. Dyer is a naive 20 something working-class man who drinks too much. The only thing they have in common seems to be that Dyer's horrifying and bloody nightmares are very similar to Bacon's twisted paintings. As Bacon becomes more involved with his work and their differences become more pronounced, Dyer finds himself in a dark downward spiral. The scenes in this work like little vignettes. They are simultaneously visually stunning and repulsive--it is often like watching a painting that moves. The story is rather boring, but this movie is definitely worth seeing for its fantastic cinematography and frightening visuals. It looks like a nightmare come to life.

My Rating: 6/10.

John Maybury's film presents artist Francis Bacon as an uncaring, disturbed, unhinged, genius who used people and life to feed his bizarre artistic talent. Even the way the film is shot (distorted images, odd angles, flashes of colour) shouts 'artist'. Against this backdrop the story of Bacon's life is secondary.

Derek Jacobi plays Bacon, in a radical departure from the work he is best known for - in fact, this film was completed while he was regularly on television as brother Cadfael. He is excellent in a deeply unsympathetic role. Daniel Craig, as his lover, nemesis, and muse, is also very good. Tilda Swinton is the best of a supporting cast of oddball characters.

This film is ultimately frustrating, difficult, and perhaps a pointless exercise as far as giving us any lasting impression of Bacon's character. But, like his well-known paintings, it is snatches of images you will remember.