John Maybury's searing portrait of the English painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) at the height of his fame in the 1960s is one of the nastiest and most truthful portraits of the artist-as-monster ever filmed. It tells the story of the colossally self-absorbed painter and his self-destructive younger lover, George Dyer (Daniel Craig), and begins when Bacon awakens in his studio one night to discover a burglar on the premises. Sizing up the thief as an appetizing piece of rough trade, Bacon makes a proposition. If the robber sheds his clothes and comes to bed with him, he promises he can have anything he wants.
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