Director Michael Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan’s latest unorthodox biopic is yet another dizzying, boundlessly engaging achievement from the as-of-yet inextinguishable pairing behind 24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story and The Trip.
There is plenty of glitz, gloss and flesh in this 1960’s-era Icarus story about Paul Raymond (Coogan), whose entrepreneurial exploits in the world of smut both on stage and in print, and whose property investment in the vast majority of England’s Soho district once earned him the title of Britian’s richest man. But like Tristram Shandy, the film’s mission unexpectedly shifts halfway through, and what could have otherwise been another rote kaleidoscope of excess becomes a tale of indelible poignancy.
The film begins late in Raymond’s life, in the aftermath of what comes to be the defining moment of his existence, an event that would cause him to surrender his empire and live out the rest of his days in reclusiveness. From within the throes of certain grief, Raymond is forced to reflect on the events that lead him there, cuing a series of flashbacks to ’60s swank and debauchery in which there is so much skin on display, it borders on clinical examination. Early on, Raymond realizes how much money people will pay to see a naked woman, and turns that token into a fortune. The shows he puts on at the revue bar he operates with his wife Jean (Anna Friel, best known stateside as the reanimated love interest in the gone-too-soon TV show “Pushing Daisies”) are at best kitschy and at worst deplorably lame-brained, but who cares when there’s so much nude frolicking going on?
Raymond isn’t immune to the wiles of his performers as he carries on numerous public affairs, including a lasting one with the statuesque Fiona Richmond (Tasmin Egerton, in a smoldering star-making turn). Raymond later teams up with Tony Power (Chris Addison from In the Loop, at his usual smarmy best) the editor of Penthouse-esque magazine “Men Only”, which introduces the question by the press of whether Raymond is a peddler of pornography, a notion he vehemently disavows. And just as The Look of Love seems to be on track to collapse under one-note repetition, Raymond’s grown daughter Debbie (a revelatory Imogen Poots) arrives to grace the story with its uncrushable soul.
Winterbottom, the prolific English director, doesn’t scare from ambitious projects, which are largely comprised of docudramas, meaning his impressively robust catalog is inevitably hit-and-miss. No other director appears more comfortable reiterating past eras (or, in the case of his dystopian sci-fi romance Code 46, envisioning future ones). He freely incorporates period footage into the dramatization, and odd details that a more traditional biopic would gloss over. What makes The Look of Love such an exorbitant success is how it shirks the overview structure, instead pulling at threads that unravel Raymond as a catalyst for the imminent destruction of his family rather than an admired emissary of smut.
A stand-alone scene midway through shows Raymond encountering his illegitimate son Derry for the first (and only) time. The young man arrives at Raymond’s quarters for dinner, is offered champagne as Raymond boasts about how Ringo Starr designed his lavish apartment. The twentysomething Derry, in a dowdy suit that looks more like a school uniform, politely feigns interest at his father’s fanfaronade in a way that Raymond clearly isn’t used to. It’s the only scene in the film without a beautiful woman in it, and the discomfort evident on Raymond’s face as he trudges through that meeting is perfectly subtle and overwhelmingly sad. Raymond is so unwilling, or more likely unable, to invest in a relationship that has no desired or obvious outcome. He has become a machine whose engine is fueled by naked women. Both men gradually forget why they’re there, or what they want from each other, as Raymond fails to impress Derry with his wealth and perhaps realizes he has nothing else to offer. They both resort to running out the clock until a distant handshake brings the curtain down on their relationship. When Derry presents old photographs of himself and his mother with Raymond, Raymond politely gives them a glance before sliding them back over, dismissing them as images from “Another life.” It’s a tricky high-wire walk of heartbreaking nuance nailed by both actors, and one of the best scenes in Coogan’s career.
Whether intentional or not, The Look of Love is the ideal b-side to 24 Hour Party People, Winterbottom and Coogan’s 2002 biopic about Manchester record producer/visionary Tony Wilson. While it doesn’t quite reaches the delirious highs of that film, it maintains a fizzy energy that echoes the fervid style of Martin Scorsese at his most playful (Winterbottom even bites a shot directly from Scorsese’s unsung masterpiece Bringing Out the Dead, in a move so inexplicably affecting, it somehow strengthens the impact of that image in Scorsese’s film). What The Look of Love has to call its own, though, is an elegiac touch that not only compliments its bewitching effervescence, but enriches it. As a team, Coogan and Winterbottom are unstoppable.
