Steve Coogan plays the UK’s answer to Hugh Hefner in his fourth collaboration with director Michael Winterbottom. And it is ultimately more compelling as a long, colorful look at Swinging London in the 1960s than as autobiographical drama.
A gloomy note is struck at the outset as we see Coogan’s wealthy, middle-aged Paul Raymond returning with his young granddaughter from the funeral of her mother, who died of a drug overdose in 2002.
There is a series of flashbacks beginning in 1958 as the self-made Raymond rises from hosting a nude circus revue to running Soho strip clubs, producing racy stage shows and publishing magazines, all of which challenged the country’s obscenity laws.
Along the way, Raymond wreaks emotional havoc on his wife (Anna Friel) and his mistress (Tamsin Egerton), both of whom weary of his affairs and threesomes.
There’s even more collateral damage to Raymond’s talentless daughter (Imogen Poots), whom he enables to sink into addiction after she fails at acting, singing and editing careers sponsored by her father.
Coogan is often very funny as the libertine Raymond, whose real estate holdings made him one of the UK’s richest men at the time of his death in 2006. But tragedy simply is beyond his range at this point.
“The Look of Love’’ is more worth seeing for Jacqueline Abrahams’ production design and Stephanie Collie’s very skimpy period costumes.