It’s been a while since Steve Coogan did a great deal other than teaching Murdoch’s News International a lesson or two in phone etiquette, but next year’s he’ll be back to his cinematic best. Playing club owner, soft-pron publisher and property mogul, Paul Raymond, Coogan will be getting all eccentric in The Look of Love.
With a release date of the 8th March 2013, and developed with Film 4, The Look of Love sees Coogan working with Michael Winterbottom once again, building on the success of The Trip and 24 Hour Party People. Written by Matt Greenhalgh (Nowhere Boy), it looks at the life of the man that brought Britain its first strip club.
Raymond opened his Revuebar in Soho in the late fifties, which he followed up with the purchase of Men’s Only magazine to add to his undressed millions, which grew further with both Razzle and Mayfair. His property acquisition in the centre of London earned him the nickname, the King of Soho, but it’s not just the life of the top-shelf millionaire that the film is all about. Like 24 Hour Party People, The Look of Love also takes in the pivotal moments in British cultural history that underpin the story.
The film also stars Anna Friel, Tamsin Egerton, Imogen Poots and Chris Addison, but more than any of that, and to quote Steve Coogan, it also features “lots of naked ladies”, so if you can package it up as a cultural revue then you’ve got more chance of getting green lit for a screening.
The Look of Love isn’t all light and fantasy filled though, it also takes in Paul Raymond’s relationship ups and downs, as well as the loss of his eldest daughter towards the end of his own life. While sex sells and money talks, reality has a way of creeping in on us all, which is what should make Steve Coogan’s 2013 release the must see film that it’s bound to be.
Steve Coogan will also be releasing his long awaited Alan Partridge movie, Alpha Papa, on the 7th August 2013.
