WasAnnon
Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
BallWubba
Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.
paulijcalderon
This is great visually, but the story doesn't hold up as well as the visual style. I am not very familiar with the real life story of the painter that this movie is based on, but I never really got a sense of who he really was. Which is a shame because it feels like you are supposed to understand him and his art. What makes the movie work is the nightmarish tone throughout.There are some strange and frightening images which are worth a look. You could say this movie is a bit experimental. But, again, the main character did unfortunately not work too well for me. He felt rude and selfish and his inner monologues felt like a different character in my opinion. In the end it seemed like the secondary character was the more sympathetic one. I don't know if that was the point, but I'm sure the painter had an interesting life. This is just not the movie to showcase it. Don't get me wrong, it's not the actors fault. They do a good job with what they are given.There are some interesting things here. Colors are great and some locations feel claustrophobic, which help give the sense that you can't escape this dream. I just wish the main character could be more like-able and that it had a story you could get more invested in. Watching it is still surreal, dark and will take you on a unique dream like experience.So, the visual outshine the characters in my opinion. It is worth watching for the nightmare/dream scenes. Everything to do with that reminds me of something out of a David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick film. Hey, maybe the main character will work better for you. Maybe this movie could grow on you over time, it feels like it's one of those type of films that need a bit of time digest.
sunheadbowed
After reading Daniel Farson's moving and strangely tender biography of Francis Bacon, I expected to equally enjoy 'Love Is the Devil', but it didn't quite click.The book left me with a feeling of compassion and understanding for the twisted, Grand Guignol monsters of The Colony Room, with their likable mix of contempt for showy pretension and debauched indulgence in caricature role-playing of the very same thing; this film left me feeling not much at all, except slightly depressed and empty -- the characters seemed to be presented in their worst light at all times, which isn't what the book was about. A big part of Bacon's appeal, for me, is his integrity.Despite how difficult it was to feel any warmth for any of the characters, Jacobi's Bacon was almost eerie in how close it got to the real thing.The stylisation of the film attempts to echo Bacon's art (which is never easily imitated): using mirrors and other tricks, the actors are at times shot in ways that grotesquely morph their faces into the violent splashes of beautiful disfigurement in Bacon's portraits; Dyer's nightmares feature screaming, blood-red creatures that seemingly crawled right out of Bacon's triptychs. The attempts at cinematic art are commendable but not entirely effective: what should be chilling and striking, like the subject matter himself, is a little bit boring.I never quite bought Daniel Craig as George Dyer, but that's probably as much to do with 'seeing James Bond' as anything. Had I seen the film in 1998, perhaps I would have been able to succeed in suspending disbelief.If you enjoyed this film you definitely have to read Daniel Farson's book.
secondtake
Love is the Devil (1998)Francis Bacon (along with Lucien Freud) is one of a handful of British painters of note in the last century. That's not very many. And he's inflated here beyond his very idiosyncratic and repetitive works. They're powerful paintings, no question, and filled with psychological drama as well as painterly angst. They come from a time when representative and expressive paintings was out of favor, and so he's a rebel, too. But this isn't about Bacon the successful artist, and it doesn't address his work directly (the filmmakers couldn't get his cooperation so none of his work is shown). What it does do is show the man, as seen through actor Derek Jacobi, who plays a kind of deadpan and slightly boring character a little too well. We are, I think supposed to find the artist through his mentality, which is played out here by showing his social and sexual lives in all kinds of diversity.But there is another goal to the movie, to me: creating an interesting contemporary world of artists and social renegades. That is, the art world of London (etc.) in roughly the 1970s or 80s. The filmmaker John Maybury is a close associate of Derek Jarman, who was an openly gay filmmaker known for personally quirky films that dealt with issues that mattered to him, including his odd and intriguing "Caravaggio." Maybury, unlike Jarman, has no history of great indie films, and this one is just structurally awkward, and in filmmaking terms it seems a little novice, whatever the good intentions.So it might actually fail on several levels. One is the most damning--that it doesn't actually illuminate the paintings. I found the personal life and the heightened story distracting, even if it has a basis in truth (and is the driving line of the movie). It also doesn't quite work on the simple level of convincing acting, even though Jacobi looks enough like Bacon to make that fly, and his counterpart played by Daniel Craig is decent (we don't dare expect more from Craig, do we?). And then the movie wobbles visually, both with camera-work that is either clumsy or affected (or both) and with editing that seems clunky. That is, this is a movie almost "thrown together."Which I'm sure it was not. Maybury is trying to mainstream his life (unlike Jarman, who enjoyed being an Indie star), and his collaborations with the likes of Keira Knightley are revealing for both (one as a way of going serious, the other for a way of going commercial). I know there are those who accept and love a movie like this because of its flaws, which only enhance somehow it's integrity and its artistry. But that's only one way to look at it, and if you like offbeat movies that are also brilliant deep down, you might not find that here.
niddy7
I'll admit it. I rented this film to explore the past works of Daniel Craig. He's great in it and so is the legendary Derek Jacobi. The movie itself is presented in what I'm assuming is the same vein as Francis Bacon's works. There are lots of dramatic flashes of what are supposed to be disturbing imagery, etc. However, these effects take away from the story of what happened between these two people. Instead these two great actors are forced to tell a story as best they can in "moments". This movie did spur me to do some light research into Francis Bacon, which helped me fill in the story. Knowing more about what happened gave the performances more meaning but I think it could have been better. Still, full frontal nudity from Daniel Craig made it more than worth the price of admission. License to thrill: confirmed.
