A short but suitably warped account of the love affair between the painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi) and a small-time criminal named George Dyer (Daniel Craig), who was to model for some of Bacon's most convulsive works. The action, for what it's worth, starts in 1963 and ends in 1971, but the director, John Maybury (a disciple of Derek Jarman), is only fitfully tempted by the demands of plot. He prefers to function in impressionistic bursts; we get a series of flickering, semi-linked scenes in which Bacon gambles, brushes his teeth with bleach, drinks with his appalling cronies, braces himself for masochistic sex, and even occasionally begins to paint-although, since the film was forbidden to show any authentic Bacons, he never gets very far. What rescues the enterprise from indulgence is, first, the audacity of Jacobi's performance, with its blend of caution and abandonment, and then Maybury's honorable attempt not so much to mimic the blurting violence of Bacon's imagery as to suggest the ways in which it was triggered by ordinary life. If only someone had given as much thought to the script. -Anthony Lane Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker