Directed by John Maybury
92 minutes
In English

Today a large part of the queer community embraces our corporate consumer world and strives for inclusivity. There is a big party every year in the canals that celebrates queerness as being 'normal', and many dance with the cops and there are banners waving from all the major banks. But this is actually a new phenomenon. Before in our history queerness had a radical misfit quality, something I actually am more excited by. The experimental beat-writer William Burroughs, the poet-thief Jean Genet, the British filmmaker Derek Jarman, etc. The list is endless, and the history is rich. Sure, none of them wanted to be beaten over the head by cops or queer-bashers—which was indeed happening—and they didn't want to be sent to a mental institution and given electric shock treatments or thrown out of their jobs because they were queer. But they didn't want to fit in either. They wanted to create their own culture, which was in opposition to the boring, bourgeois ideals of mainstream society. We can easily include the famous Irish-British painter Francis Bacon in this spirit, who is the subject of this movie. 

In the 1960's the expressionist painter Francis Bacon was a wildcard. He was fiercely intelligent, insightful and nonconformist. He was hanging out with drunkards, rascals and outcasts. His fauvistic paintings exposed all the submerged emotions and psychology that our society is based on and tries to hide. All that raw material is bursting to the surface in his work. The twisted and distorted faces in his paintings, in their own way, have an almost philosophical relevance—but also a certain poetic beauty. Bacon led a bizarre life, and chose for adventure rather than a comfortably numb existence. A great example of this is focused on in this movie. Late one night, a thief broke into his residence and caught Bacon by surprise. What did Bacon do? Call the police? No, instead, he became the thief's lover. This love affair is what this film is largely about. 

Actor Derek Jacobi portrays Bacon, while the working-class burglar George Dyer is represented by Daniel Craig (yes, before he became James Bond). By the way, the image I have chosen isn't from this film, but is actually a dashing real-life photograph of Bacon's lover George Dyer, just to give you an idea how he looked. Also, on board in this film we have the  radiant spirit of Tilda Swinton, and somewhere there is also Anita Pallenberg. Queer director John Maybury was a protégé of Derek Jarman, and started off doing pop videos (Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U") before he threw himself into this flick where he uses many of the aesthetics of Bacon's paintings into the visual style—shooting through dirty glass, focusing on convulsive muscularity, boozy and blurred distortions splashed across the screen—a warped mood that reflects the "gilded gutter life" of the artist, all tied up with a wild soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto.