LOVE IS THE DEVIL

UK, 1998, 90 minutes, Colour.
Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig, Tilda Swinton.
Directed by John Maybury.

A film about the British painter, Francis Bacon. He is superbly played by Derek Jacobi as a petulant upper-class genius, self-absorbed, using people, especially George Dyer, his model with whom he had an ultimately destructive relationship.

The film does not focus so much on Bacon's actual paintings. It is more interested in the man, his personality, the influences on his art, his experiences that led to the paintings, the irony that great artistry can emerge from reprehensible attitudes and behaviour.

1.Audience knowledge of Francis Bacon, his art? His status? Post-war genius? His paintings of the human condition – from his own strange and mad experiences?

2.The re-creation of the London world of art, the gay scene, Soho? Bacon and his friends? The clubs? The musical score?

3.The importance of the visual, the realisation of Bacon’s art, the film made to look like his art, the editing and impressions? Art and paint, styles? Distorted mirrors? Glass, angles, colour, shapes, the stairwell? The various combinations? The physical reality – meat, blood, wounds, scars …?

4.The title, Francis Bacon and his diabolical self, George Dyer – diabolical or not? Love and the relationship between men and women, men and men? Bacon and George Dyer? Love, lust, sadomasochism? Dominance?

5.The significance of the voice-over, the sayings, the incidents? The importance of Dyer and the fall, the credibility of the story?

6.George Dyer, Daniel Craig’s performance, as a burglar, sharing Bacon’s bed, the Pygmalion effect – but with Dyer dominating? At home, the life in the room, the cigarettes and the burns? Apologies? Bacon and Dyer at the clubs? The casino, locked out? Drunkenness? Dyer relating to the friends? The nature of his relationship with Bacon, friendship, love, lust, power? The infidelities?

7.Derek Jakobi as Francis Bacon, his appearance, incarnating the artist and his madness, the painting sequences, his skills, insights into human nature? The gay sensibility, his bitchiness, his friends, the meetings, the clubs, the drinking? Relationships? Permanent and casual?

8.George and his dreams, the nightmares, diabolical, the red, the blood, the figure, crouching? His fears? George seeing himself as a loser? Premonitions?

9.The friends, their characters, the gay scene, the clubs, the camp talk, the restaurants?

10.The morbidity of Bacon’s life and relationships, his art? A poet of a world of evil? Mundane yet wanting to transform into an angel? Yet inner destructive demons?