tlavideo.com

Review

The first feature film from experimental filmmaker John Maybury is a portrait of self-absorbed, self-destructive, brilliant painter Francis Bacon. The film opens with a lusty burglar, George Dyer (Daniel Craig), dropping into Bacon’s studio from his skylight, and subsequently being invited into Bacon’s bed. We learn rather quickly of our artist’s taste for rough trade, and his submissive masochistic bedroom desires. Maybury’s screenplay appears to have been written using Bacon’s journals, although no such credit is given in the film. One can only guess that these poetic words describing George’s nightmare plagued sleep are imagined, "I watch him while he’s sleeping, a prisoner fighting the battle he’s always going to lose. I’m powerless to help myself, so I watch and wait." The story takes us to Francis Bacon’s three favorite places; his studio, the bar and his bedroom. Although we aren’t treated to any of the paintings, his feeling of movement and fleeting dark beautiful moments is translated miraculously and mysteriously to film. This capsule of Bacon’s life in the Sixties was tumultuous, violent and profoundly unhappy, one can only hope that there were brighter moments for Bacon. At the bar, The Colony Room Club, Bacon meets nightly with his cronies and hangers-on. Included is a nasty lesbian with bad teeth, identifiable only through the credits as the usually elegant Tilda Swinton. The gang regularly drinks until staggering, quite frequently on Francis’ tab. The drunken scenes are captured exquisitely by a deliberately unfocused camera lens and chiascuro lighting. One’s peripheral vision appears to be malfunctioning by the end of the film, as we never actually see the corners of the rooms. The last major setting is the bedroom, and this is a sad tale indeed. Francis Bacon not only likes his men rough and off the streets, but he likes to be physically abused. We are saved from scenes of that abuse, but it’s made explicit. Russell Davies, writer ofQueer as Folk, was quoted recently in London Gay Times as saying "...pictures of perfect lives are boring. Drama about imperfect people is what we crave." Love is The Devil is certainly that, and an enjoyable dark portrait it is.

 -- Scott Cranin