British artist Francis Bacon was not a cheery man. Bacon, who died in 1992 and was perhaps one of the great painters of this century, specialized in the torments of the soul. A staunch figurist in the '50s and '60s, when Abstract Expressionism was the currency of the art world, Bacon specialized in the bloodied and contorted bodies of men and women. Skin disease and car crashes fascinated him as strangely beautiful. "I believe that man understands now that he is an accident, that he is a being devoid of all meaning," Bacon once wrote.

Derek Jacobi plays Bacon in "Love Is the Devil," John Maybury's new film about the relationship the painter had with his model, George Dyer. Jacobi, who starred in the television production of "I, Claudius" and can be seen in the PBS "Mystery!" series "Brother Cadfael," is also a widely respected film and stage actor.

When Maybury offered Jacobi the role of Bacon, he jumped at it. "I said, `Yeah, let's do it'," Jacobi recalls, sitting back at a table at the Eliot Hotel, when he was in town to promote the film. "It was a good part, a modern role. I have a reputation of being a bit of a classical actor, a bit of a tights man. It was lovely to be in a pair of trousers for once."

Maybury casts the relationship of Bacon and Dyer against the London social scene of the '60s and early '70s. Dyer literally dropped into Bacon's life, falling through his skylight as he attempted to burgle the artist's house. In the film, Bacon invites Dyer into his bed, then introduces him like a debutante into the society of the London art world. The film begins and ends with Dyer's suicide; he took his life in Paris in 1971, as Bacon was being feted at the Grand Palais with a retrospective exhibition that hailed him as the greatest living painter.

Jacobi, who was made a knight in 1994, didn't know Bacon. "His acquaintance was huge, but I never met him," he says. "I was vaguely familiar with his art. I had not responded well to it. In fact, I responded fairly negatively. I don't think I'd have got on with him. I'm far too placid. I like my eight hours of sleep every night. And I don't have that cruel streak."

It should be no surprise to anyone who has seen Bacon's art that the painter had a cruel streak. As "Love Is the Devil" progresses, Bacon and Dyer, played by Daniel Craig, become more and more viciously entangled. Bacon treats Dyer miserably, mocking him, laughing at him in front of friends. In a particularly chilling moment toward the end of the film, a friend offers Bacon condolences at a cocktail party, right after Dyer's death. Bacon's eyes light with an empty, brutal wildness. "Oh, boohoo," he cackles. "You have to either laugh or cry, don't you?"

Then again, the cruelty went both ways. In one riveting scene, the two men stand on either side of a table, silently undressing. Clad in his underwear, Bacon walks to his bed, kneels beside it, rests his head on it, and pulls up his undershirt. Dyer, smoking a cigarette, nonchalantly strolls up behind Bacon and pushes the lit stub into the painter's back.

"Oh, Francis was a very cruel man," Jacobi emphasizes. "But they fitted. Physically and sexually, Francis was the masochist. He enjoyed pain and anguish. Socially and emotionally, he gave the pain. George was the other way around; sexually he dished it out, but emotionally he took it in. To relieve the burden, he resorted to drugs."

Jacobi plays Bacon as tightly wound. There's an element of extreme control in everything he does, yet that wildness shows in his eye. Obsessed with his own appearance, or, as Jacobi puts it, "his own mythologized aspects," Bacon wore makeup and dressed elegantly. His boyish brown hair belied his age (he was born in 1909). The actor pored over videotapes of the artist, picking up mannerisms and tics. "I would copy slavishly," Jacobi says. "He always had shirts that would cover his neck up. Perhaps he thought his neck was scraggy. And there were little physical things." The actor clears his throat. "Like that. Or he would take a deep breath for no reason. Things like that make me believe I'm not me. I'm physically not behaving the way I normally behave. I'm not thinking about the things I normally think about."

Jacobi himself seems the dead opposite of the character he portrays. His hair is snow white, his eyes gentle. He clearly delights in simply expressing himself, in the flow of words and ideas. To Bacon, delight was foreign. Playing someone so emotionally brutal wasn't easy. "I had to go down avenues that I wouldn't normally go down," Jacobi says. "But I live in the magical world of `If . . .' If I enjoyed having cigarettes stamped out on me. But at the end of the day I could go home."

Ultimately, the film traces Dyer's disintegration against Bacon's ascent as a painter. Dyer is haunted by a nightmare of a single, bloody figure falling -- an image straight out of Bacon. Maybury captures Bacon's palette and claustrophobic mood in his camera lens; he even contorts figures by shooting reflections in doorknobs and punch bowls. "John made it redolent of Bacon's technique," Jacobi said. "But ultimately, it isn't about painting, and it's not a biopic about Francis. It's about two different people from two different worlds."

Painting, nonetheless, was where Bacon found his truth. "I don't think Francis lied on canvas," Jacobi reflects. "He was truthful. It was what he saw as the truth. He had a freedom in front of a canvas. In life he was more self-conscious. He was inordinately selfish--that's evident in his relationships, the way he treated friends and lovers. But when he stood in front of a canvas he could be objective, rather than subjective. A lot of it came by accident. He would open himself up.

"In life," Jacobi concludes, "he didn't allow room for accident."