the_lady_lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_lady_lily) wrote2013-12-29 07:00 pm
the_lady_lily) wrote2013-12-29 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
Filmography
The Look Of Love
I wasn't planning on watching this because a) Steve Coogan and b) exploitative porn industry apologetics. However, I've read a couple of interviews with Coogan lately and it looked as if he was trying to move on from Alan Partridge (whom I cannot stand), and the more I read about the material, the more interesting it looked, so I figured I'd give it a go.
It is, of course, full of exploitative porn industry cross-making-ness, as one would expect; after all, the protagonist is Paul Raymond, the man who opened the first private club in Soho and thus began the genre of the strip club by getting around the Lord Chamberlain. You weren't ever going to get around that. However, the film does two interesting things. First, it illustrates the great big blind spot in Raymond's beliefs and attitudes, and his assumptions that everything was Absolutely Fine - or at least, the story he told himself. That narrative is not unchallenged within the film - various characters, irritatingly mainly women, tell Raymond he's being an idiot and that his screw-anything-that's-female attitude isn't actually the sort of life they want, thus perpetrating a narrative about What Women What and What Men Want and why Never The Twain Shall Meet which isn't terribly helpful. (Albeit contextualised by the fact Raymond is creating the girlie industry.)
The second thing the film does is pull out a strand of Raymond's character that's surprisingly gentle, and that's his affection for his daughter, and his desire to look after her. The film ends with Debbie's drug overdose, and uses Raymond's thoughts after the inquest while he looks back over his memories as the skeleton for the film as a whole. It's surprisingly poignant, and does a good job of pulling out some of the contradictions about Raymond in general - he wanted to be a successful and respected businessman, but moved his magazine publications into the realm of harder and harder porn; he wanted to have a happy family life but slept around and didn't maintain contact with either of his sons.
Overall, I thought this was a more nuanced film than I was expecting, and did a good job of drawing out Raymond's character - not perfect, and still highly problematic given the subject matter, but it was much better than my initial impressions led me to suspect.
I wasn't planning on watching this because a) Steve Coogan and b) exploitative porn industry apologetics. However, I've read a couple of interviews with Coogan lately and it looked as if he was trying to move on from Alan Partridge (whom I cannot stand), and the more I read about the material, the more interesting it looked, so I figured I'd give it a go.
It is, of course, full of exploitative porn industry cross-making-ness, as one would expect; after all, the protagonist is Paul Raymond, the man who opened the first private club in Soho and thus began the genre of the strip club by getting around the Lord Chamberlain. You weren't ever going to get around that. However, the film does two interesting things. First, it illustrates the great big blind spot in Raymond's beliefs and attitudes, and his assumptions that everything was Absolutely Fine - or at least, the story he told himself. That narrative is not unchallenged within the film - various characters, irritatingly mainly women, tell Raymond he's being an idiot and that his screw-anything-that's-female attitude isn't actually the sort of life they want, thus perpetrating a narrative about What Women What and What Men Want and why Never The Twain Shall Meet which isn't terribly helpful. (Albeit contextualised by the fact Raymond is creating the girlie industry.)
The second thing the film does is pull out a strand of Raymond's character that's surprisingly gentle, and that's his affection for his daughter, and his desire to look after her. The film ends with Debbie's drug overdose, and uses Raymond's thoughts after the inquest while he looks back over his memories as the skeleton for the film as a whole. It's surprisingly poignant, and does a good job of pulling out some of the contradictions about Raymond in general - he wanted to be a successful and respected businessman, but moved his magazine publications into the realm of harder and harder porn; he wanted to have a happy family life but slept around and didn't maintain contact with either of his sons.
Overall, I thought this was a more nuanced film than I was expecting, and did a good job of drawing out Raymond's character - not perfect, and still highly problematic given the subject matter, but it was much better than my initial impressions led me to suspect.