Playing for Keeps stars Gerard Butler as former professional soccer player George Dyer, who moves to Virginia in order to reconnect with family and becomes the coach of his kid’s soccer team in the process. Thrilling, right? Well, if you want to know whether or not George’s story has a happy ending, you’re in luck because I was one of the few people who saw it, so you don’t have to. Warning: Spoilers ahead. (But really, that’s the whole point of this, no?)
Dyer’s pro career ended with an injury, and now he’s broke and living in Principal Figgins’ (Iqbal Theba) guest-house. (Okay, he has a real name, but I can’t remember it.) At the beginning, we see George making what looks like a crappy audition tape for a sportscaster’s job. He takes the demo to Ben from Grey’s Anatomy...
Dyer’s pro career ended with an injury, and now he’s broke and living in Principal Figgins’ (Iqbal Theba) guest-house. (Okay, he has a real name, but I can’t remember it.) At the beginning, we see George making what looks like a crappy audition tape for a sportscaster’s job. He takes the demo to Ben from Grey’s Anatomy...
- 12/9/2012
- by EW.com
- Huffington Post
Our season of British cult classics gets off to an arty start with a duo of films about Francis Bacon and Caravaggio
Love Is the Devil, the 1998 film directed by John Maybury, is many things: the first serious cinematic study of the life and art of painter Francis Bacon, a tour de force performance by Derek Jacobi, an unholy convocation of YBAs (including Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst) filling in as background extras; and perhaps, most remarkably in hindsight, an early sighting of 007 himself, Daniel Craig. Craig is rather brilliant in Love Is the Devil, playing the troubled George Dyer, Bacon's petty-criminal lover, who met the artist after crashing through his roof while attempting a break-in, and who killed himself in 1971. You can't say Craig doesn't go all the way for his art: the film includes a jaw-dropping scene of him in the bath, entirely in the altogether.
Love Is the Devil, the 1998 film directed by John Maybury, is many things: the first serious cinematic study of the life and art of painter Francis Bacon, a tour de force performance by Derek Jacobi, an unholy convocation of YBAs (including Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst) filling in as background extras; and perhaps, most remarkably in hindsight, an early sighting of 007 himself, Daniel Craig. Craig is rather brilliant in Love Is the Devil, playing the troubled George Dyer, Bacon's petty-criminal lover, who met the artist after crashing through his roof while attempting a break-in, and who killed himself in 1971. You can't say Craig doesn't go all the way for his art: the film includes a jaw-dropping scene of him in the bath, entirely in the altogether.
- 11/9/2012
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
The Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle gave his opinion of the film shortly after its release: he was impressed by the accuracy of Jacobi's performance, if not by the insertion of YBAs into the pub scenes …
The painter Francis Bacon, who turned down both the Order of Merit and the Companion of Honour, is crouched over the bed in nothing but his underpants. He waits. His lover, a Kray gang hanger-on called George Dyer, stands over him, a cigarette in his mouth, a belt twisted in his fist.
This is a scene from John Maybury's Love Is the Devil, subtitled "Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon" starring Derek Jacobi as the painter, and Daniel Craig as Dyer, Bacon's lover, tormentor, victim and model. In the film, Dyer, a hapless East End burglar, introduces himself by crashing through the skylight of Bacon's tiny South Kensington studio, while attempting a burglary.
The painter Francis Bacon, who turned down both the Order of Merit and the Companion of Honour, is crouched over the bed in nothing but his underpants. He waits. His lover, a Kray gang hanger-on called George Dyer, stands over him, a cigarette in his mouth, a belt twisted in his fist.
This is a scene from John Maybury's Love Is the Devil, subtitled "Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon" starring Derek Jacobi as the painter, and Daniel Craig as Dyer, Bacon's lover, tormentor, victim and model. In the film, Dyer, a hapless East End burglar, introduces himself by crashing through the skylight of Bacon's tiny South Kensington studio, while attempting a burglary.
- 11/9/2012
- by Adrian Searle
- The Guardian - Film News
Subtitled "a study for a portrait of Francis Bacon," writer-director John Maybury's tedious composition about diabolical artists and the models and lovers they abuse premiered at Cannes, with stateside distributor Strand Releasing looking at a minor attraction on the art house circuit.
Starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon, "Love Is the Devil" is heavy on atmosphere, and its distorted visuals approximate the bleak imagery of Bacon (1909-92), one of the better-known British painters of the century. While it concentrates on just a few years in Bacon's life, Maybury's film is still overly ambitious and busy, essentially going through a laundry list of woes and mean little activities but not pursuing the often nasty subject matter to its most unnerving revelations.
Alas, one is more shocked by the conventional storytelling and hokey approach to what could potentially have been a searing experience. Chronicling Bacon's intense relationship with George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a thief who breaks into his residence and stays when the artist invites him to bed, "Love Is the Devil" has several striking sequences, but its grand and grim vision is disappointingly slim and unengaging.
While Bacon uses him as a model, Dyer slowly unwinds and goes bonkers, having abattoir dreams with bloody apparitions. Hanging with the exceedingly corrosive artist and his rotting pals, Dyer develops a taste for boozing and brooding and nearly commits suicide. Misanthropic and sociopathic, needy-in-his-own-way Bacon keeps Dyer around because the younger man is handy in the bedroom.
Typical of this sketchy film, one scene is set aside to show that Dyer is adept at inflicting pain with cigarettes and belts. Showing Bacon the sexual masochist is so easy, the cocky filmmakers overstate the opposite truth -- in social and personal relationships he's a sadistic SOB. In case we're having trouble getting the message, there's helpful narration and voice-overs, with Bacon's "optimistic about nothing" attitude carried to an irredeemable extreme in his ignoring Dyer's pleas for help.
Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton and Karl Johnson fairly ooze across the screen as horrid pub pals of Bacon. But this grotesque chorus of upper-crust ghouls becomes tiresome, and so do the predictable class conflicts between Bacon and Dyer.
Through it all, Jacobi and Craig give passionate performances that almost redeem the film.
LOVE IS THE DEVIL
Strand Releasing
BBC Films, Premiere Heure, Uplink
A BFI production
In association with Partners in Crime
Writer-director: John Maybury
Producer: Chiara Menage
Executive producers: Ben Gibson, Frances-Anne Solomon, Patrice Haddad, Asai Takashi
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Alan Macdonald
Editor: Daniel Goddard
Costume designer: Annie Symons
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Casting: Mary Selway
Color/stereo
Cast:
Francis Bacon: Derek Jacobi
George Dyer: Daniel Craig
Muriel Belcher: Tilda Swinton
Isabel: Anne Lambton
Daniel: Adrian Scarborough
Deakin: Karl Johnson
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Starring Derek Jacobi as Bacon, "Love Is the Devil" is heavy on atmosphere, and its distorted visuals approximate the bleak imagery of Bacon (1909-92), one of the better-known British painters of the century. While it concentrates on just a few years in Bacon's life, Maybury's film is still overly ambitious and busy, essentially going through a laundry list of woes and mean little activities but not pursuing the often nasty subject matter to its most unnerving revelations.
Alas, one is more shocked by the conventional storytelling and hokey approach to what could potentially have been a searing experience. Chronicling Bacon's intense relationship with George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a thief who breaks into his residence and stays when the artist invites him to bed, "Love Is the Devil" has several striking sequences, but its grand and grim vision is disappointingly slim and unengaging.
While Bacon uses him as a model, Dyer slowly unwinds and goes bonkers, having abattoir dreams with bloody apparitions. Hanging with the exceedingly corrosive artist and his rotting pals, Dyer develops a taste for boozing and brooding and nearly commits suicide. Misanthropic and sociopathic, needy-in-his-own-way Bacon keeps Dyer around because the younger man is handy in the bedroom.
Typical of this sketchy film, one scene is set aside to show that Dyer is adept at inflicting pain with cigarettes and belts. Showing Bacon the sexual masochist is so easy, the cocky filmmakers overstate the opposite truth -- in social and personal relationships he's a sadistic SOB. In case we're having trouble getting the message, there's helpful narration and voice-overs, with Bacon's "optimistic about nothing" attitude carried to an irredeemable extreme in his ignoring Dyer's pleas for help.
Tilda Swinton, Anne Lambton and Karl Johnson fairly ooze across the screen as horrid pub pals of Bacon. But this grotesque chorus of upper-crust ghouls becomes tiresome, and so do the predictable class conflicts between Bacon and Dyer.
Through it all, Jacobi and Craig give passionate performances that almost redeem the film.
LOVE IS THE DEVIL
Strand Releasing
BBC Films, Premiere Heure, Uplink
A BFI production
In association with Partners in Crime
Writer-director: John Maybury
Producer: Chiara Menage
Executive producers: Ben Gibson, Frances-Anne Solomon, Patrice Haddad, Asai Takashi
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Alan Macdonald
Editor: Daniel Goddard
Costume designer: Annie Symons
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Casting: Mary Selway
Color/stereo
Cast:
Francis Bacon: Derek Jacobi
George Dyer: Daniel Craig
Muriel Belcher: Tilda Swinton
Isabel: Anne Lambton
Daniel: Adrian Scarborough
Deakin: Karl Johnson
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/7/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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