# Love Is the Devil
**Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon** is a 1998 British biographical drama directed and written by John Maybury, starring [Derek Jacobi](https://www.edgepedia.org/derek-jacobi) as the painter [Francis Bacon](https://www.edgepedia.org/francis-bacon) and [Daniel Craig](https://www.edgepedia.org/daniel-craig) as his lover and model George Dyer. Produced by the British Film Institute with BBC Films and the Arts Council of England, it dramatizes the couple's relationship from their meeting in the 1960s to Dyer's death in Paris in 1971, on the eve of Bacon's retrospective at the Grand Palais.[1](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil) • [2](https://bbcinsight.pages.dev/bbcfilm/films/love-is-the-devil)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | John Maybury, his first feature film[1](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil) • [3](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/full-mental-jacket-1.441776) |
| Principal cast | Derek Jacobi (Francis Bacon), Daniel Craig (George Dyer), Tilda Swinton (Muriel Belcher)[1](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil) |
| Key crew | Cinematography John Mathieson; music Ryuichi Sakamoto; editing Daniel Goddard; production design Alan MacDonald[4](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/love-is-the-devil/) |
| Production | BFI production with BBC Films and the Arts Council of England; 35mm, 90 minutes[2](https://bbcinsight.pages.dev/bbcfilm/films/love-is-the-devil) • [1](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil) |
| Festival and release | Un Certain Regard, Cannes 1998; UK release 18 September 1998[4](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/love-is-the-devil/) • [2](https://bbcinsight.pages.dev/bbcfilm/films/love-is-the-devil) |
| Reception | 67% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (21 reviews); US gross $343,000[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_is_the_devil) |
| Awards | Best New British Feature at the 1998 Edinburgh International Film Festival; Evening Standard British Film Award 1999 for Best Actor (Jacobi)[6](https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000220/1998/1/) • [7](https://www.filmfriend.de/en/movies/a6a33e84-0651-4e0e-9bdf-ea201150a8d8) |
## Spoilers
### Story and structure
The film opens in 1971 in Paris, where Bacon is being honored at a major retrospective at the [Grand Palais](https://www.edgepedia.org/grand-palais) and acclaimed as the "greatest living painter". While the ceremony proceeds, Dyer, his model and lover of seven years, swallows a lethal combination of pills and alcohol in their hotel room. As Dyer loses consciousness, the film flashes back to the night they met, when Dyer, a petty burglar, fell through the skylight of Bacon's South Kensington studio during an attempted break-in, and Bacon took him to bed.[8](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/love-is-the-devil)
From there the film follows the couple through the bohemian demi-monde of 1960s Soho, including drinking sessions at the Colony Room, the private club run by Muriel Belcher, and trips to New York and Paris. As Bacon's success grows, Dyer sinks into alcohol and drug dependence, and the relationship, in which the film presents Bacon as a masochist in bed and an emotional sadist outside it, ends with Dyer's suicide on the eve of the 1971 retrospective.[8](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/love-is-the-devil) • [9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/love-is-the-devil-view-from-art-world)
Sources date the first meeting differently: the Guardian and Anthony Lane's New Yorker review place it in 1963, while the [British Council](https://www.edgepedia.org/british-council) synopsis says 1964.[9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/love-is-the-devil-view-from-art-world) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/love-is-the-devil) • [1](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil)
## Production
**Origins.** Maybury, a former member of [Derek Jarman](https://www.edgepedia.org/derek-jarman)'s circle who had worked on Jarman's *Jubilee* (1977) and shot experimental punk films in the 1970s, offered Jacobi the lead in 1994, two years after Bacon's death in 1992. The film is loosely based on Daniel Farson's biography *The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon*, and Maybury spent a year and a half researching Bacon's life, talking extensively with people who knew him.[11](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-oct-11-ca-31288-story.html) • [12](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-is-the-devil-1998) • [13](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/21628/love-is-the-devil)
**Funding conflict.** Prior to the start of filming, Lord Gowrie, who chaired the Arts Council at the time, stepped in personally to prevent the Arts Council from funding the film, and the money was restored only once changes had been made to the script. Maybury later said that the opposition of "the great and the good" gave the film publicity it would otherwise never have achieved.[14](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1998/09/01/putting-bacon-in-the-pictures-love-is-the-devil-to-be-released-18-september) • [15](https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/9df776ec3b2697fc7b497cdefea4ef889dcbec4975c851a60b263e93b5255bff/1832699/Bovey_David_thesis.pdf)
**No Bacon paintings.** The keepers of the Bacon estate refused permission to reproduce any of the artist's actual canvases on screen, and the critic David Sylvester, whose interviews with Bacon are regarded as the definitive record of the artist's thoughts, refused to have anything to do with the film or to allow Bacon's recorded words to be used.[16](https://eppc.org/publication/love-is-the-devil/) • [9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/love-is-the-devil-view-from-art-world) Maybury, himself a painter, said he did not want to make a conventional biopic; he described the film as an exploration of relationships in general, between artist and muse, lower and upper class, and sadist and masochist, adding that it was not specifically a gay film.[14](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1998/09/01/putting-bacon-in-the-pictures-love-is-the-devil-to-be-released-18-september)
## Visual approach
Denied the paintings, Maybury and cinematographer John Mathieson made the film itself look like a Bacon. Faces are shot distorted through curved glass, mirrors, liquor bottles and water, echoing the blurred physiognomies of Bacon's painted heads, and the painter's trademark cage-like structures and triptychs are replicated with surreal scaffolding and mirrors. [Tilda Swinton](https://www.edgepedia.org/tilda-swinton)'s Muriel Belcher is seen only distorted through liquor bottles.[12](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-is-the-devil-1998) • [17](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/11/13/love-is-blind-to-artists-essence/92e63e28-c33a-4480-a638-ab497f7f4cf7/) • [8](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/love-is-the-devil)
[Ryuichi Sakamoto](https://www.edgepedia.org/ryuichi-sakamoto)'s score is spare and melancholy, holding the lurid imagery in a register of elegy rather than sensation.[18](https://sightlines.media/film/4975/love-is-the-devil-study-for-a-portrait-of-francis-bacon-1998) The film also gave contemporary cameos to figures from the 1990s British art scene, including [Tracey Emin](https://www.edgepedia.org/tracey-emin), Gary Hume, Gillian Wearing and Rifat Ozbeck, alongside some of Bacon's original Colony Room drinking companions, a choice the Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle found intrusive in the pub scenes.[14](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1998/09/01/putting-bacon-in-the-pictures-love-is-the-devil-to-be-released-18-september) • [9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/love-is-the-devil-view-from-art-world)
## Reception
The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and won the Best New British Feature award at Edinburgh, where it also took acting prizes. It stayed a niche arthouse item, grossing $343,000 in the United States, and drew a 67% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 21 critics.[4](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/love-is-the-devil/) • [6](https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000220/1998/1/) • [18](https://sightlines.media/film/4975/love-is-the-devil-study-for-a-portrait-of-francis-bacon-1998) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_is_the_devil)
Critics were divided along predictable lines. Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 of 4 stars, writing that Maybury and Mathieson "make the film itself look like a Bacon" so that a viewer who had never seen one could identify one instantly in a gallery.[12](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-is-the-devil-1998) Anthony Lane praised "the audacity of Jacobi's performance, with its blend of caution and abandonment". The Washington Post's reviewer found the film visually stylish but ultimately obscure, arguing that the ban on real paintings left "what's strangely missing... the art itself".[10](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/love-is-the-devil) • [17](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/11/13/love-is-blind-to-artists-essence/92e63e28-c33a-4480-a638-ab497f7f4cf7/) Jacobi's performance drew particular praise across reviews; the [Evening Standard](https://www.edgepedia.org/evening-standard) named him Best Actor for 1999.[7](https://www.filmfriend.de/en/movies/a6a33e84-0651-4e0e-9bdf-ea201150a8d8)
## Legacy
The film was Maybury's first feature and helped launch the career of cinematographer John Mathieson, who went on to work on major British productions. For Daniel Craig, the role of Dyer was an early critical marker; after he became [James Bond](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-bond) in 2006, a new audience sought the film out, and it has since been cited within the canon of British art-house and queer cinema as an example of how to make a film about a visual artist without showing the art.[18](https://sightlines.media/film/4975/love-is-the-devil-study-for-a-portrait-of-francis-bacon-1998) B. Ruby Rich's *New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut* groups it with Lisa Cholodenko's *High Art* (1998) as films that crossed into theatrical art-house release while refusing utopian views of queer relationships, depicting exploitation, physical abuse, class friction, and appropriation instead.[19](https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-01-13_61e07a5f90f1a_NewQueerCinemaTheDirectorsCutbyB.RubyRichz-lib.org_.pdf)
## References
1. [Love Is The Devil, British Council UK Films Database](https://filmsandfestivals.britishcouncil.org/projects/love-is-the-devil)
2. [Love is the Devil, BBC Films page (mirror)](https://bbcinsight.pages.dev/bbcfilm/films/love-is-the-devil)
3. [Full Mental Jacket, The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/full-mental-jacket-1.441776)
4. [LOVE IS THE DEVIL, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/love-is-the-devil/)
5. [Love Is the Devil: Study of a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/love_is_the_devil)
6. [Edinburgh International Film Festival (1998), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000220/1998/1/)
7. [Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, filmfriend](https://www.filmfriend.de/en/movies/a6a33e84-0651-4e0e-9bdf-ea201150a8d8)
8. [Love is the Devil, International Film Festival Rotterdam 1999](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/1999/films/love-is-the-devil)
9. [Love Is the Devil: the view from the art world, The Guardian (Adrian Searle)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/09/love-is-the-devil-view-from-art-world)
10. [Love Is the Devil, The New Yorker (Anthony Lane, 2021)](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/love-is-the-devil)
11. [Entering an Empire of Pain, Los Angeles Times (1998)](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-oct-11-ca-31288-story.html)
12. [Love is the Devil movie review, RogerEbert.com (1998)](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-is-the-devil-1998)
13. [LOVE IS THE DEVIL, Melbourne International Film Festival archive](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/21628/love-is-the-devil)
14. [Putting Bacon in the pictures: 'Love is the Devil' to be released 18 September, The Art Newspaper (1998)](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1998/09/01/putting-bacon-in-the-pictures-love-is-the-devil-to-be-released-18-september)
15. [David Bovey, doctoral thesis on the British artist biopic, University of Westminster](https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/9df776ec3b2697fc7b497cdefea4ef889dcbec4975c851a60b263e93b5255bff/1832699/Bovey_David_thesis.pdf)
16. [Love is the Devil, Ethics & Public Policy Center (James Bowman, 1998)](https://eppc.org/publication/love-is-the-devil/)
17. ['Love' Is Blind to Artist's Essence, The Washington Post (1998)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/11/13/love-is-blind-to-artists-essence/92e63e28-c33a-4480-a638-ab497f7f4cf7/)
18. [Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Sightlines](https://sightlines.media/film/4975/love-is-the-devil-study-for-a-portrait-of-francis-bacon-1998)
19. [B. Ruby Rich, New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut](https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-01-13_61e07a5f90f1a_NewQueerCinemaTheDirectorsCutbyB.RubyRichz-lib.org_.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license