Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon · reception & legacy
1998 · John Maybury
How Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A prickly Un Certain Regard premiere at Cannes '98 that won acting prizes at Edinburgh but stayed a niche arthouse item — until Daniel Craig became Bond in 2006 and a whole new audience came looking, cementing its slow climb into the queer-cinema canon.
What's debated
The perennial fight: is Maybury's woozy, distorted style a brilliant translation of Bacon's paintings into cinema, or an art-school affectation that keeps you at arm's length from the man?
Its footprint
It's the film forever cited in 'Daniel Craig before Bond' threads — a young, frequently nude Craig as George Dyer opposite Derek Jacobi's Bacon — and Jacobi himself joked that's exactly why the DVDs kept selling.
Where it stands
A cult fixture of British queer cinema — the artist biopic cinephiles hold up as proof the genre doesn't have to be tasteful, and a staple of LGBTQ+ retrospective programming.