Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

• Audio Commentary track with director John Maybury and actor Derek Jacobi
• Original Theatrical Trailer (2:12)

Bitrate:

"Love Is the Devil," the new film by John Maybury, takes me at last up those stairs, and back in time to the decades when Francis Bacon presided over a scruffy roomful of bohemians--some rich, some poor, some gay, some straight, all drunks. The movie is loosely inspired by Farson's The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, which documents the life of the greatest modern English painter as a dour and bitter ordeal, the bitchiness relieved intermittently by a good vintage and the Dover sole at Wheeler's. (Bacon liked a crowd at lunch and didn't mind picking up the check.)

To look at a Francis Bacon painting is to get a good idea of the man who painted it. In an era of Abstract Expressionism, he defiantly painted the figure, because he wanted there to be no mistake: His subject was the human body seen in anguish and ugliness. Flesh clung to the bones of his models like dough slapped on by a careless god. His faces were often distorted into grimaces of pain or despair. His subjects looked like mutations, their flesh melting from radiation or self-loathing. His color sense was uncanny, his draftsmanship was powerful and unmistakable, his art gave an overwhelming sense of the artist.

Excerpt from Roger Ebert located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

The highly emotional Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon has arrived Blu-ray from Strand Releasing in the US. This is single-layered with a very high bitrate and I expect this is an excellent representation of the textured theatrical appearance from 1998. There is a pleasing tightness and depth - as well as a thick style-infused texture to some of the obtuse visuals that intentionally appear distorted. Love is the Devil is filled with unusual shots augmenting the story with inventive cinematography. This Blu-ray seems to do its job in the video presentation, although, obviously, not a tight, pristine original presentation. I expect it is supposed to look exactly this way.

NOTE: Bjorn tells us in email "...one thing I noticed on the new Strand BD, which overall is the best home video presentation to date, is that in the scene around 31:40 where Bacon brushes his teeth with Vim that on the first shot of him there appears to be a really obvious color correction power window on his face - it has straight edges so it's really obvious. This disappears on the subsequent cuts to the same shot in the scene." (thanks Bjorn!)

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Audio is transferred via a DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel at 1734 kbps. It's fairly passive but we get an interesting score by Ryûichi Sakamoto (Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor and Oshima Nagisa's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) that sounds very impacting at times. There are some minor effects with depth via the lossless. There are optional English subtitles offered and my Oppo has identified it as being a region FREE - playable worldwide.

Extras :

 

 

BOTTOM LINE:
Love is the Devil is both a fascinating and deeply searing portrait of the artist, Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi), at the height of his notoriety in the 1960's. It's very sexually explicit in regards to his private life and certainly paints an unflattering biography of the man (monster?). The Strand Releasing Blu-ray provides a solid presentation - supporting the less-dynamic film's video with as good an a/v as we are likely to find. The commentary adds eve further value. If your mind is open to this - it's quite an emotional and interesting presentation. Recommended!  

Gary Tooze

January 14th, 2015