The Look of Love
(2013)
Michael Winterbottom likes his sexy romps. He also likes his
collaborations with Steve Coogan. Now, for the first time, he combines the two!
Winterbottom seems to be in constant search of something new, be it style,
genre or subject matter. This comes in tandem with an unfussy, get-to-it approach
to filmmaking. He rarely makes dross, but one gets the impression that, if only
he took the time to finesse his material, he’d be more likely to make films
that were consistently really good.
Rather than merely respectable. He’s dependably experimental I guess you could
say. The Look of Love is a biopic of
smut-peddler Paul Raymond, at one point the richest man in Britain. In chronicling
his less than salubrious life and career Winterbottom has made a respectable enough
movie, but unfortunately it’s a long way from being really good.
Coogan plays Raymond, from his early days compering nude
tableaus at his variety shows (it was only an offence if the girls displayed moving wares) to his rise with London
strip club the Raymond Revue Bar. He channels his profits into property (we see
him giving both his daughter and granddaughter a tour of his many investments;
asked why he has so many, he answers that it “confers respect”). By the ‘70s he is staging theatrical revues, and
it’s during this period that he leaves wife Jean (Anna Friel), who has been
hitherto willing to indulge his loose behaviour, for performer Amber (Tasmin
Egerton, pretty but leaving little impression). It’s also the point that he
takes on Men Only, a top shelf
magazine edited by Tony Power (Chris Addison).
Winterbottom and Coogan have a relatively benign view of
Raymond. His debauchery is shown (at least at first) to be cheerful and
good-natured, and Jean only takes him to the cleaners (winning the biggest
divorce settlement ever in Britain to that point) when his relationship with
Amber becomes all excluding. The Men Only
antics are seen from as a progression from terribly British naughty postcard/ Carry On humour. Accusations of
degradation to women are met with quips and rejoinders from Raymond. It’s all a
bit of harmless fun. On the back of the post-‘60s liberation, it seems that Raymond
is able to assume a vaguely anti-establishment position. If we aren’t quite encouraged
to get behind him, we are supposed to be amused by his relaxed abandon. When
his revue Pyjama Tops receives
scathing reviews, he pronounces “To be
described as the worst play in the last 25 years is almost as good as being the
best play in the last 25 years, because people are going to talk about it, and
that’s all that matters”. He even prominently displays the rebuke “arbitrary displays of naked flesh” on
the billboard, the assumption being that all publicity is good publicity.
Amber, re-named Fiona Richmond for the purposes of Men Only, asks “penetrating
questions” as she travels “around the
world in 80 lays”. Raymond picks up where Sid James et al were too innocent
to continue.
But the heart of Winterbottom’s film is Raymond’s indulgent
relationship with his daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots). If director and lead
actor are unable to lay bare Raymond’s inner life (they lay bare nearly
everything else, however) they are at their best dealing with his hopeless inability
to observe the appropriate boundaries as a parent. Not just with Debbie; this is
further emphasised by scenes with his sons. One is from his first marriage,
with whom Raymond is either unwilling or unable to make any connection.
Debbie’s brother is openly hostile, having moved to Miami with Jean. He dotes
after his daughter, and serves her up a succession of theatre projects. Rather
than being honest about her failings, he closes a show purely on the grounds
that it is haemorrhaging money. When she develops a voracious coke habit, father
joins in; his only caveat is that she should consume the good stuff. He even
does her a line when she’s in labour. When Amber leaves him, unwilling to
compete with his hedonistic lifestyle, we see more clearly the lonely and
isolated life he leads. His is the classic story of money not buying happiness.
He’s at a loss in the opening scene, set in 1992, when he asked about the death
of Debbie (who died of a heroin overdose). He gave her everything she could
possibly want; how could it come to this?
If Winterbottom wisely doesn’t push the moral reproof, the
problem is that he doesn’t push much at all. This is a smoothly oiled period
piece, revelling in the currently fashionable ‘70s milieu and taking delight recreating
its excess. But it proves resistant to saying anything much beyond the obvious.
Coogan is very good, carrying off both Raymond’s charm and sadness. When he
takes to the dance floor with Debbie’s friends, he’s like a derelict version of
Jason King; talking the talk but with none of the debonair or loucheness. If Raymond
remains something of a mystery, one is partly left with the impression it’s
because he was empty somewhere deep inside (uncharitably, one might point the
finger at Matt Greenhaigh’s unfussy script; Greenhaigh might have carved
himself a little too comfortable a niche as a screenplay biographer). I wasn’t
so sure about the impressions though, as that seems more like Coogan schtick
(who knows, perhaps Raymond was the
Mike Yarwood of the porn world). Poots is outstanding, spiralling vulnerably
and affectingly out of control. I’ve read a few criticisms of Friel, but I
thought she was fine (and also very game). As for Addison, he’s cast to type as
an oily weasel; alas, his enormous beard fails to render him unrecognisable.
There’s a vague feeling of déjà vu throughout; we’ve seen
this story before in a variety of incarnations. And Winterbottom’s vision of
the seedy ‘70s is rather spruce and swish compared to the tawdriness one would
expect; we’re closer to Austin Powers
than grim skies and men in dirty macs. Most problematically, despite strong
work from Coogan and Poots, the tragedy doesn’t have the necessary impact. In
the end, The Look of Love comes up
short because there isn’t much going on beyond the obvious; it’s all one long
seedy high time, until it’s not. Perhaps because Winterbottom is unable to
break from a rather literal retelling of Raymond’s (pecuniary) rise and
(emotional) fall. By some distance The
Look of Love the least of Coogan and Winterbottom’s hitherto fruitful
pairings.
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