El rey del erotismo

Finally caught up with this film and felt that it began very strongly, beautifully evoking those early Paul Raymond days as he dragged Soho and indeed Britain out of the drab post war 50s and into what would become known as the 'swing sixties'. Steve Coogan is excellent but after abut twenty or thirty minutes and we have seen the early shows recreated and the neon light red light district come alive we are drawn further into the private life of the man. This is interesting enough, at first, but the real story here is what Raymond did in terms of liberating us inhibited Brits and in building his property and sex empire. In the end this degenerates into simply one more line of coke. We are also asked to become involved in the tragedy of the life of his daughter but we don't care. The weak script has not allowed for the necessary empathy to develop and we are left to watch despairingly as all comes depressingly undone.

Paul Raymond was fascinating figure, being the richest man in Britain, making his fortune from exclusive men's clubs, publishing softcore pornography and having a massive property portfolio. He based his reputation on controversy, using notoriety to get more attention which results with him getting more sells. But he had a troubled relationship with the women of his life, his wife, his lover and his daughter.

Steve Coogan plays Raymond, a Liverpoolian lad who starred out as entertainer but quickly moved to working behind the scenes and starring to run exclusive men's clubs with his wife Jean (Anna Friel). During his rise he makes a fortune, stretching the bounds of public decency when he moves to theatre and publishing. During his rise he forms a relationship with Amber (Tamsin Egerton) who becomes Fiona Richmond, a famous British sex symbol, leading to him having the largest divorce settlement in British legal history and stay close with his daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) who he sees has his heir apparent but has a massive drug addiction.

As the subject for a bio-pic Paul Raymond for both his business achievements and his personal life: but The Look of Love stretches itself too thin, not knowing where to focus and therefore making for a shallow experience. The Look of Love was a film that tried to fit too much and we end up getting scenes and elements of Raymond's live going by too fast or come out of nowhere, such as Raymond meeting his illegitimate son. It felt like the film was gutted in the editing room with how it only briefly on many different aspects such as the controversies, his rise in business and a sex scandal just to name a few.

The Look of Love was written by Matt Greenhalgh who has written two excellent bio-pics, Control and Nowhere Boy. The strength of those films are they were both were very focused on a specific area of their character's lives, John Lennon and his relationship with his mother and Ian Curtis' epilepsy and depression. The Look of Love has a different approach of looking at a much larger time period and look at many different aspects of Raymond's life. It can be argued that the films main focus is on his relationships with women and by the end the main focus is his relationship with his daughter.

Despite The Look of Love has a comedy cast the film is a very serious tone and performances. Coogan does give a very good dramatic performance and it good to see him taking different roles. He does have some witty lines but on the whole it was a serious role. It was actually surprising that the audience laughed during a scene which was very serious when Raymond ends up having to make a line of cocaine for his daughter when she was giving birth. Egerton, Poots , Friel and Chris Addison too were solid in their roles, but Davad Williams' role was extremely minor that it felt pointless to the point where his role seemed like it was mostly cut and people like Stephen Fry and Dara O Briain were camoes.

Director Michael Winterbottom does inject a lot of period detail to the film and there are some stylist moments when he does montages. There is a different look to each period, the 50/60s being shot in the black and white, his rise in the 70s being quite bright and need the end having more gritty cinematography. But like his previous film that I saw, Trinsha, it has a paradox of feeling both too short and too long for both skipping over elements and yet having a slow pace. One moment I enjoyed was a quick 30 second scene done in one take as Jean confronts Amber/Fiona with the camera following her.

On the whole The Look of Look is a very well acted film which is its greatest strength, but does not know where to turn which part of its subject matter it should examine.

this is a movie filled up with event and facts but no characters, no detail on characters' world, they are acting on the surface, the script is the problem, it should be worked into textures and layers of these colourful characters rather than just covered them with events and what's happen,

they could edit some scenes out which director just show what's happen but not take them further to a better storytelling; stories happened to build the characters so we viewers can sympathize with them. You don't feel for any of the characters here. it's such a shame. this movie has no angle to this special group of people.....

All the emotion is not quite there, never gets to the point and ends at the surfaces. the film wasted these casting since they can do more than what's in the film. We all know how well they can act for such a colourful Raymond's world.

3 of my favourite films have been directed by Michael Winterbottom and starred Steve Coogan. A Cock And Bull Story, 24 Hour Party People and The Trip (in the UK we were lucky enough to see the full TV series, but the movie version was great as well).

This isn't as good, but still entertaining. When I was pubescent, Paul Raymond's Men Only magazine was a must-read if you could get an adult to buy it for you, and Fiona Richmond was someone you thought you might just have a chance with if you got to meet her. In short, this film meant a lot to me.

My problem with this is that it's all far too glossy. Soho in the 60/70/80's and there isn't a villain in sight and everything going on is fairly innocuous? And I really liked Paul Raymond, but to survive in that environment there must have been more to him.

Anyway, an enjoyable film overall. And I went away with that final close-up on Imogen Poots as Debbie singing the title song almost breaking my heart.

Steve Coogan was turned down for the lead in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, losing out to Geoffrey Rush, and I get the feeling this is his attempts to compensate. It is a biopic with a retro look, encompassing the same era and focused on an oft unsympathetic individual who goes on to neglect his wife and kids.

The problem is that Sellers was a man of a hundred faces while Paul Raymond seems to have none, he always came across as a deeply uncharismatic, grey little man so instead Coogan pastes his own TV persona onto him. It's not quite Partridge, but we've seen it before in 24 Hour Party People and in things like Tristram Shandy and The Trip, where Coogan plays an unflattering version of himself - sort of narcissistic, insecure, a bit sarcastic and witty, not without flair.

I didn't mind this in the Tony Wilson biopic, largely because that was played for laughs and also looked outwards to the whole Manchester music scene, but I did mind it here. We really have no clearer idea of Raymond's personality at the end of it - it maybe should have looked at the hangers on a bit more and the world of Soho generally. What's more, the pop music tends to date better than soft porn. For this to be a celebration of the Raymond Revue Bar, you'd have to contrast the buxom babes with the dour, pinched women of the era, starchy Margot Ledbetters and Margaret Thatchers, with hornrimmed spectacles and never a day in the gym. (Not saying the blokes looked much better back then to be fair. A quick look on Google Images reveals that the real Raymond was severely balding even by the mid 1960s, so must have sported a heavy hairpiece for his lothario years.)

Imogen Poots is poignant as his daughter, and they try to make out she's the same fit as newspaper proprietor Kane's wife, with similar ill-advised showbiz ambitions. Poots gets to sing the title track rather affectingly, the other song on a loop is Anyone Who Had a Heart, so maybe they were going to go with that title for the film at one point. But it's all very broadly written, and too much improvised it seems. Chris Addison impresses as one of the hangers- on, but I couldn't help thinking (due to his look in this) that we'd be better watching a history of Radio 1, with Addison as DLT and Coogan as the odious Jimmy Savile.

As for other stars, Stephen Fry plays a judge and is in this for less than a minute, David Walliams has a recurring cameo as a lecherous vicar, the sort of role that Terry Scott would have played, but is given no backstory or context to speak of, while Matt Lucas plays a stage character for all of 30 seconds. So don't be fooled by scrolling down the cast list, it's fairly slim pickings and at times it resembles those awful No Sex Please We're British movies of the day. You do get a fair bit of sex, with coke snorting atop many a bare breast, so it's not one to watch with the folks, but I can't say it's quite as erotic as I'd like, maybe because tastes have moved on since then.