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Paul Raymond, the Grand Master of 70s pornography and the self proclaimed King of Soho, is the central character in this biopic by Michael Winterbottom, based on Paul Willets book, Men Only - and yet Winterbottom's film is as much about the people around Paul Raymond as it is about the man himself.

The film begins with Paul Raymond - played here by a superb Steve Coogan - mourning the evident loss of his daughter Debbie, reflecting on his life and relationship with her via an old video recording. Hounded by the media outside his Mayfair penthouse he is a shadow of what he once was, grey, tired, backlit. The film then flashes back to the humble almost-beginnings of Paul Raymond, telling in turn each significant phase of his life and success - from the era of the Raymond Revue Bar and the notorious (but unsurprisingly successful) Pyjama Nights theatre show right through to his later success with the Men Only magazine.

Winterbottom and his production designers capture beautifully the design aesthetic of the era - the penthouse flat, which Raymond brags was designed for him by Ringo Starr, is particularly noteworthy - and together with the excellently chosen soundtrack and crisp cinematography capture a real sense of the colour and hedonism at the heart of this man's life in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. In fact the style, design and structure of the film reminded me very much of both Boogie Nights and Goodfellas.

Coogan is on top form, and while some people many see his performance at Paul Raymond as just a pastiche of Alan Partridge, I for one don't. For in the same way that the well known and well loved radio journalist from Norwich is something of an alter ego for Coogan, the idea of Paul Raymond himself is just an act, a face that the man wears for the public (and often for his private life). From the outset when we discover that his real name is Geoffrey Quinn we see a man who is forever hiding behind something, keen to portray himself as something very different to his real existence. His ignorance of both his legitimate and illegitimate sons; his outwardly normal and happy relationships with women(which both eventually break down); his twisting of words and meaning to justify his business - here is a man who spends his life stripping away the veneer of respectability in public life with exhibitions of voyeurism and pornography and yet one who keeps his own very private and personal existence hidden from view, the only seemingly genuine emotion and touching moment when he watches old video footage of his daughter. Despite the hordes of women, despite the money, despite the power Paul Raymond never seems genuinely happy. Everything is a mask for a hollowness that is only filled ultimately by the presence of his daughter.

Imogen Poots pushes to the fore as Raymond's wayward daughter Debbie. The film is as much about the destructive life she leads than that of her father - in fact you could see her downfall as paying the price for his father's sins. Encouraged into areas where she had no talent (Imogen Poots off-key singing was at the same time humorous and tragic) and tempted by the drugs and easy-to-sleazy lifestyle around her father it is inevitable that it would be she who's fragility and delicacy is torn apart. The only character for whom Paul Raymond feels any lasting emotion is the one character he drives to the edge of destruction, ultimately watching as she crashes and burns over the edge.

The actress plays the part masterfully and I choose the words "fragility" and "delicacy" quite deliberately - she manages to never loose that school girl naivety and innocence, even when playing Debbie at a much older age. It's quite an affecting turn from Imogen Poots, who's talent and beauty will surely mark her out as a very big star in the future.

Other cast members are also effective - Chris Addison as the somewhat slimy Tony Power; Anna Friel as Raymond's first wife Jean; Tamsin Egerton as the club dancer with whom he runs off. There are also a series of cameo performances from familiar faces that give this film a genuinely British feel, of the like normally associated with older, classic British movies. Perhaps it's the accompanying soundtrack and design styles in play but this feels like The Italian Job, or Alfie; or Blow-Up. Simon Dee wouldn't look out of place driving off in his sports car with a blonde in the passenger seat (in fact there is something of a homage to the credits of his 1960s TV show Dee Time in the film).

I was fortunate enough to see this at an advance screening of the film at the Bradford International Film Festival, where the screenwriter Matthew Greenhalgh fielded questions from the audience. Challenged about the sexual politics of both the film and pornography in general Greenhalgh seemed somewhat overwhelmed.

But this isn't a film about feminism, or the rights and wrongs of pornography and its politics. The film-makers are showing us a classical tale of rise and fall, and of how even someone who essentially uses people for the pleasures of others can still have the redeeming feature of love, even if he doesn't realise it until it is far too late. This film is not just about Paul Raymond's life and career but also about his relationship with his daughter and how she was ultimately sacrificed to the lifestyle he chose. I'm sure there is a film about the politics of pornography in this story but to have entertained us with it wouldn't have been half as interesting - or successful as I feel this film ultimately is.

Yet another collaboration with the Director Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan, and their second biopic together, the last one being 24 Hour Party People. It seems like Michael Winterbottom thinks that Steve Coogan has a knack for portraying charismatic men with too much money and who are innovators of their time. He is right, Steve Coogan puts in one of his best performances.

Steve Coogan plays Paul Raymond, the king of Soho. He earns this title because he was responsible for owning many of the strip joints in that area of London. We are taken through a wild ride from the beginnings of his travelling nudie shows, to the sophisticated private mens clubs of Soho, to porn publication to being a property magnate. The story mainly focuses on the three main women in his life. First his wife Jean (Anna Friel), his girlfriend Amber (Tamsin Egerton) , who later changes her name to Fiona Richmond when she becomes a famous model, and his daughter Debbie (wonderfully played by Imogen Poots). Paul Raymond likes to have open relationships with multiple women in which Jean has a liberal attitude towards, but when this starts to take its toll on the relationship and family life, he is drawn to the young and seductive Amber. He introduces her to his world and gets her parts in various nude stage plays and ends up having a long term relationship with her. His daughter Debbie comes back into his life and is also introduced into the excesses of Paul's life. She gets into all the drugs and the partying which meet a tragic end. This is mentioned at the start of the film while we see a dejected Paul Raymond being hounded by reporters. He proceeds into a dark room and watches a film of the 'glory days', and this is what the film becomes. A series of memories through the eyes of a man who has seen better days.

It is another one of those what-comes-up-must-come-down films where a man starts off with nothing, then becomes the richest man in Britain through his publication of magazines like 'Men Only' and 'Razzle' and through property. However, it is still fun to watch because despite Paul's selfish ways, he is a likable and charismatic man who conducts his business well and really believes in what he is doing. He maintains throughout that what he is doing is not pornography or exploitation and uses negative press condemning the nudity in his plays humorously to his advantage. It also shows mostly the vulnerable side to Paul, mainly through his relationship to his daughter Debbie. He basically picks her as his favourite and has little to no part in his sons life. The scene between the two characters are a mixture of happy moments and disturbingly damaging moments. He spoils her rotten, lets her snort an enormous amount of cocaine and lets her party far too much. One disturbing scene is when Debbie is in labour and Paul gives her a line of cocaine to ease the pain. The continual drug taking only gets worse, and on top of that, she is diagnosed with breast cancer! She eventually dies of a heroin overdose and this has a massive effect on Paul as she was the one who was to inherit his empire. He then picks his oldest grand daughter as his favourite towards the end of the film, posing the question, has he learn-ed anything and will he ever change? The answer being no if the dejected man watching his past is anything to go by.

We see much of todays British comedic talent turn up in this film. David Walliams has a minor part as a lecherous vicar, Matt Lucas has a cameo, Chris Addison has a major role and puts in a good performance and Simon Bird (Will from the Inbetweeners) has a small part. He turns up wearing a ridiculous wig and sporting an equally ridiculous moustache and marries Debbie briefly, then does not turn up in the film again. That is one of the big flaws of the film. It covers 4 decades of a mans eventful life, but some events still seemed rushed. It is merely mentioned that Debbie had a close relationship with Fiona Richmond, but this is never shown. Also, a different husband (or maybe boyfriend) of Debbies turns up later in the film, but we didn't even know her marriage ended. I have a feeling there was a more fleshed out script, but it was edited due to time constraints.

It was an entertaining look at an industry which is shown impartially. Whether you think Paul Raymond is a purvey sexist or a liberator is down to your point of view, the film only hints at what Paul Raymond thinks. I thought he was a damaging person who made bad choices which led him to being lonely and unhappy to his death. Yet another case of money does not necessarily buy you happiness.

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Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan team up again. They had previously combined to great effect in 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story. It has to be said that, while this is a good enough film, it pales in comparison with those other two. Perhaps the main reason for this is, unlike Tony Wilson from 24 Hour Party People, the main character here isn't very sympathetic at all. Steve Coogan plays Paul Raymond in a similar bumbling way but it doesn't seem as true to character here. Coogan is still good, don't get me wrong, but he seems more on auto-pilot than usual. On paper the cast is really good. It's a who's who of British comedians and comic actors. In practice though, most of them have blink and you'll miss them roles, which was kind of unfortunate. Of the ones who do have bigger parts Chris Addison plays perhaps the least admirable character in the story, Men Only editor Tony Power, a man also with a truly appalling beard. Also Anna Friel is good as Raymond's long suffering wife.

It's a biopic about the porn baron Paul Raymond. But curiously, it lacks a bit of drama. Raymond has already made it when the story begins and the rest just adds further details such as the creation of Men Only magazine or specifics on personal relationships like with Fiona Richmond. Perhaps the main concurrent storyline is about his daughter who ended up dying of a drug overdose, this plot strand is the only one that provides any emotional fall for the central character. Raymond seems to have been a hopeless father, allowing his daughter to take cocaine with little concern and being entirely ambivalent to the existence of his first son. He is also a terrible husband and generally a somewhat sleazy individual. He isn't likable but not horrendous enough to be a great anti-hero.

The Look of Love sometimes feels like an attempt at a British Boogie Nights. It's stylised enough and similarly has a soundtrack that reflects the times. But it doesn't have the energy and fun of that movie. It does have a lot of nudity though that much is for sure. Of especial note on that front is a scene where Anna Friel is photographed while in a bubble bath. She looked pretty fantastic it has to be said. The sexiest moment in a film that doesn't really have very many despite the subject matter. In fairness, this is a good film; just one that I thought would be better considering the personnel involved.

Michael Winterbottom's The Look of Love is a comedy-drama that never needed to be funny. The film is above all else a tragedy about how a man's wealth and his real estate empire clouded his judgment in all of his relationships. He earned his wealth through establishing his Revue Bars in Soho, the West End of London during the late 1950s. These bars featured nude female models, who were allowed to move on stage, which was deemed illegal at the time.

Raymond then established his Men's Only magazine, which was a pornographic publication. His rise in wealth and property through the 60s and 70s led for him to be titled by the mid-90s as "The King of Soho". Paul Raymond was declared in 1992 to be one of the richest men in Britain. He died in 2008 with a fortune that was said to be worth over six-hundred million dollars.

This is the fourth film Winterbottom has made with Steve Coogan, after Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip and 24 Hour Party People. Coogan specialises in playing shallow, self-absorbed, stuffy characters. His performance as Raymond is familiar but extremely engaging and darkly funny. Accompanied by some hilariously silly innuendo-laden dialogue, he uses his voice to express the pompousness and artificialness of Raymond's self-made identity.

He values his wealth and celebrity image over sustained relationships. One of the stories he repeats is that his apartment was designed by Ringo Starr. A tracking shot as he walks through the room shows the sustained but untouched and unfulfilled construct of his lifestyle. In the context of censorship laws, the incredibly frank and confronting stage shows have a historical resonance, which is further complimented by their utter ridiculousness. Some of Raymond's stage ideas, like combing Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun on stage with nude female models, are strange and hilarious.

Yet Paul Raymond is also in many ways a terrible man. His wife Jean (Anna Friel) willingly lets him cheat on her and he relates to his daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots), not through ordinary parental wisdom, but the advice of a business partner. When she eats all of the cakes he buys for her, he tells her that they're not all for her but for the other girls so that she'll have friends. Similarly, when she cries about being cut from one his shows as a singer he doesn't reassure her about future but argues that he can't let the show keep bleeding money.

What the screenplay from first time writer Matt Greenhalgh lacks is a deeper understanding of both the reactions and the immobility of the characters. The film is about Raymond's relationships with three different women and despite all of the ones that he sleeps with, works with and exploits, he understands none of them. Rather unintentionally, the film is like this too.

The female characters contradict themselves in confusing ways. His first wife knows about his affairs but is still surprised and upset when he finally leaves her. His mistress Fiona (Tamsin Egerton) is no fool either. She writes for his magazine and models in his shows. She engages with him and other women in acts of threesomes but leaves him when he can't offer a normal life.

The film is extremely alert to Raymond letting his own daughter fatally self-destruct through her cocaine addiction (he advises her to buy the good stuff) but at the end the film still makes an attempt to reach for our undeserving sympathy. The image of the supposedly talentless daughter singing beautifully over the end credits is also a confusing one.

If the film was not told through such a rigid, episodic structure, treating the lives of characters like small vignettes (cancer, marriage and addiction), there would have been stronger ongoing threads of conflict and more time invested into understanding these characters. Some of them are truly sadder than funny.

A biopic of Paul Raymond. A good idea on paper,as indeed it started out,based on Paul Willets biography Members Only.But the process of distilling a life into 400 pages and then again into a film leads to a feeling that The Look of Love is merely a series of anecdotes strung together.

The story is told mainly in flashback,Raymond watching a documentary about himself and his daughter Debbie,for whom at the outset of the film we are informed things haven't panned out too well. It reminds me a bit of Milk, which the first time I saw I missed the first 5 minutes of and the denouement shocked me more than anyone else,perhaps the poignancy of Debbie's story shouldn't have been flagged up so obviously.

Debbie is played beautifully by Imogen Poots,for me the stand out actor.She has a radiant delicacy about her,you cannot help but feel sorry for her character being born into a family which would seemingly inevitably bring about her destruction.

Anna Friel plays Raymond's long-suffering wife.Initially she and Raymond appear in black and white,we all know the 50's was monochrome after all.Jean Bradley was from Nottinghamshire and I think a stronger accent would have lent more to the role.Friel's character has to age about 30 years in the course of the film,the only indication of which is she looks as grey in her last colour scene as she did in her b&w youth. Along the way we are treated to a gratuitous photo- shoot,Men Only mag montage,which having seen the film twice I think may exist in two different cuts. I hope they go with the one I saw in Glasgow.

The weakest female performance is Tamsin Egerton as Fiona Richmond. I wonder if her being the only protagonist still alive lead to the wishy-washiness of the part,there isn't much for Egerton to get her teeth into but what there is seems more filler and not prime beef.

So to Steve Coogan. I find it hard to believe Raymond did impressions of Sean Connery and Marlon Brando to "amuse" his friends. Isn't that what Coogan does? Over and over again. Raymond,I posit,a deeply unsympathetic character,is seen here very much through an Alan Partridge filter.The laughs generated seem to come from Coogan's ad libs rather than the wit and wisdom of Raymond.The films opening line to camera should have been 'I'm Paul Raymond,welcome to my world of erotic-ah-ha'

If Raymond was thought worthy of having his life visualised for posterity maybe a three part TV series would have been preferable,the rise in repressed post-war Britain,the tawdry pornucopic 70's plateau,the substance-fuelled decline and fall. I'm not sure if this version will find an audience tragi-comedies are hard to pull- off and I don't think this film has.

With the recent release of the UK's rich list in The Sunday Times, the timing of the release of Michael Winterbottom's biopic of Paul Raymond, one of Britain's very own millionaires, seems appropriate. With a cast reading like a UK comedy rich list, led by 'the man who thinks he's it', Steve Coogan, a film about one of Britain's most famed smut peddlers has the potential to go any number of ways.

Charting his rise from lowly entertainer to Britain's richest man, the focus of much of the plot is on his relationships with the most important women in his life: his wife, Jean Raymond (Anna Friel), his lover Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton) and, most importantly, his daughter, Debbie (Imogen Poots). While riding the wave of success his money brings, gradually, each of these relationships breaks down as he fails to leave the clubs, magazines and women behind and form a normal life.

Starting in black and white, in what seems like a slow-paced montage, Winterbottom adds colour to the screen as the Soho nightlife begins and the female clothing ends. The film then dives into a world of sex and drugs and every hole's a goal, as the money builds and Raymond's fancies change.

While the main plot focus is on Raymond's relationships, these are often interspersed with scenes from his various nude shows or photo shoots for magazines that leave little to the imagination. These could, perhaps, have been toned down a little, or even left out, but being that this is a Michael Winterbottom film, there is a sense of trying to push boundaries, though this lacks the ambitious nature of 'A Cock and Bull Story' of the ground-breaking release of '9 Songs'.

The juxtaposition of music gigs and full sex scenes in '9 Songs'; the dialogue between Coogan and Rob Brydon and English countryside in 'The Trip' manifest here as love and lust in Raymond's life, with his love of the women in his life sabotaged by his lust for looking at beautiful women naked and results in a decent little film, but never pushing too far beyond that. More could have been done to add humour into the script or put more into his troubled relationships, rather than filling time with scenes that result from the BBFC's more relaxed governing – a situation Winterbottom helped create.

The performances here are good, though you do want Coogan to let out an 'ah-ha' every now and then, showing he is yet to fully shake the monkey off his back. Imogen Poots is convincing enough in making you believe she's the annoying result of a slightly warped upbringing; and Chris Addison shows he is perhaps more method actor than stand-up comedian. Though Dara O'Briain will never pull-off an 80s Alexei Sayle.

British films featuring a cast of comedians with a slightly raunchy theme come from a long line in tradition of being neither sexy nor funny. 'The Look of Love' does not follow a similar path, though perhaps here, much like with Raymond himself, lust slightly overpowers love, leaving neither fully satisfied.

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Coogan was excellent in this, the whole part with him and his daughter passing away was extremely well done and certainly jerked the heart strings, after watching this I read lots on his life, it was very sad to see his only real love was his daughter and after her nothing replaced her, and he lived a recluse much like Howard Hughes did in his high rise Penthouse, all his money when he died went to distant relatives who now live in his Penthouse rich without a worry in the world, and probably without knowing what went on there. Coogan is a good serious actor, I would like to see him in more things like this, he is a very versatile actor.