Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998)

You won't be disappointed!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This film is a bit of a mixed bag really. It divided people in half-one praising it unreservedly whilst the other deriding it and complaining. Personally, I can understand both aspects but I side with the former group.The whole film is like a surrealist painting but for me, the most unique scene from an artistic sense was the one in the pub, where Francis Bacon's circle of friends is introduced for the first time to the naive George Dyer. We see people's half-faces amidst a cloud of smoke and groggy reflections of featureless silhouettes on the grubby mirrored bar-front which, to me, was the perfect visual way in which to present the assortment of eccentric libertarians whom Francis Bacon counted among his nearest and dearest.I've also read so many complaints about the alleged disjointed nature of the scenes, with the second half of the film being peppered with montages of nightmarish surrealist scenarios that George Dyer finds himself in. Well, weren't these scenes part of the character that was Dyer? His insecurities and fears were imbued into the very fabric of his relationship with Bacon and ultimately led to his demise. No disjointedness there. Someone mentioned that Tilda Swinton is almost unrecognisable in this film--unrecognisable yes but brilliant none-the- less.The film on the whole is less about the two protagonists' lives and more about the nature of a relationship from the perspectives of the two people involved in it. Many found it shameful that Bacon's influence was not shown more or just that one small episode in his life merited a biographical film. But that's just it. This is not a biography. The title states: Love is the Devil: Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon. A portrait, not The portrait. This is an episode which speaks simply about a relationship and the universality of the two perspectives that defined it. The only point of objection I had at the end was the fact that very few people had even heard of the film which is easily one of Daniel Craig's best, not to mention Derek Jacobi.

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.

This film makes "Bent" seem cheerful.It's hard to believe Francis Bacon could have been as hateful and negative as this. Worst was leaving his lover (for want of a better word) George Dyer out in the rain while a sadistic renter had his way with Bacon. Sorry, worst was his flippant remark when Andy Warhol (?) sympathised over Dyer's recent suicide.The story, and apparently the life, lacked the redeeming wit of Joe Orton's, as told in "Prick Up Your Ears". Unlike his close counterpart Kenneth Halliwell, there was no suggestion that Dyer was Bacon's muse or had given him more than visual inspiration. I got to wish - at least in the film - that Dyer had taken to Bacon with a hammer before killing himself, as Halliwell did to Orton.Yes, the film is fragmented and wild, like Bacon's paintings. But is that kind of imitation helpful to understand the painter? We got to see remarkably few actual Bacon paintings, and none of those for which he is famous.Best line: "Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends."

The film begins by perpetuating the myth of the first Bacon/Dyer meeting - Bacon catching Dyer in the act of robbing his studio - and thus immediately calls its authenticity into question. Whilst the myth has a certain cachet, the scene of discovery, as presented here, is as laughable as a cheesy gay porn scenario.Daniel Craig is awesome as Bacon's piece of rough. Derek (Theatre Luvvy) Jacobi as Bacon camps it up by numbers. The arty camera devices cannot make up for the cheap production values or the threadbare script.It's a depressing 80 mins. An everyday tale of two more self-hating homosexuals and a life of doom and gloom in 60s Soho. The only highlight being Mr Craig reclining in the bath. And, handsome as he is, it wasn't worth waiting 75 minutes for.N.B. Since when did bouncers in 60s Britain wear earrings? And as for the bell-boy's mullet??? It's supposed to be a period piece! Couldn't they have got an actor with an appropriate hair cut???