Cheap Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (DVD) (Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig) (John Maybury) Price

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Customer Reviews of Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

Artistic Cliches and worse metaphors
While the casting of Derek Jacobi for this film on Francis Bacon's tumultuous affair with George Dyer seemed promising, the film was bankrupt much on plot and they had no authority to show either the man or his work. Instead, they opted for this odd exercise in film interpretation and come up with some of the worse cliche's of madness and creativity: Bacon smearing himself with paint, looking at himself in fractured mirrors, George descending down a spiral staircase, looking at people through distorted barroom glass. These are all images pulled from other artist biographies obviously and seem to want to make the cooerlation that life is a distorted sewer and we're all Bacon's subjects. Oh please. We got that message in the first 10 minutes. Why continue?
That said - alot of the other imagery was beautiful and some of the camera techniques would have made for a better low budget movie on Bacon had they taken the time to invest in actual interesting script development, not images and vignettes. They did try to make an effort and draw a line between what the artist saw and how he painted. The problem was that this failed miserably, and Jacobi comes off as petty and comical.

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Portrait of the artist as an unpleasant man
This film is about the famous painter Francis Bacon, specifically his relationship with his lover George. Francis meets George when George is breaking into his studio to rob it. Francis offers George a deal: he can have anything he wants if he sleeps with Francis. This marks the beginning of their tumultuous and unlikely relationship. Francis, although a famous and respected artist, is cold, sarcastic, and often cruel. Aside from George, his only other relationships seem to be a handful of artistic friends who occasionally hang out in pubs together and mostly take turns putting each other down. George, an uneducated boxer, obviously doesn't fit into this world at all. But it doesn't really matter at all to Francis, who sees him mostly as a sexual plaything, as opposed to a real partner. Surprisingly, George falls in love with Francis, and begins trying to win his attention and sympathy in increasingly self-destructive ways.

Visually, this film is very true to Francis Bacon's paintings. It's full of imagery that suggests cages, pain, confusion and psychological torture. As a character study, this film suggests that Francis Bacon was just as disturbed and unpleasant as his paintings.

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Stylish and boldly unflattering portrait of an artist
Before seeing this film, I was familiar with Francis Bacon's paintings, but knew very little about him as a person. Visually, this film is extremely faithful to his paintings. It's full of shattered, twisted, and disturbing imagery that suggests suffering, confusion and psychological torture. Judging from this film alone, Francis Bacon, as a person, was just as twisted and disturbed as his work. The film begins when a rugged boxer named George breaks into his studio to burglarize it, and Francis, instead of being alarmed, instead offers to take George to bed in exchange for whatever he wants. George, himself obviously a homosexual as well, agrees and the two begin an unlikely relationship, both as boyfriends and as artist and subject/muse. It is soon apparent, though, that despite George's tough exterior, Francis is by far more cruel, sadistic, and detached than he is. Francis constantly belittles George, treating him like nothing more than a novelty and sexual object, and George, surprisingly, falls in love with Francis and begins trying to win his sympathy in increasingly self-destructive ways. At some point in the movie, after seeing Francis constantly berating both George and everyone around him, the viewer is left asking himself "Does this man have a heart at all?" Francis' reaction to George's sad fate seems to bring about a definitive answer. No.