Starring: Steve Googan, Anna Friel, Imogen Poots, Tamsin Edgerton.
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 101 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2013
| 
| 
Yes, the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song is sung several times, but that is the closest we get to real looks of love. Perhaps, that is a bit unfair to London sex entrepreneur, Paul Raymond, of the landmark Soho sign, Raymond Revue Bar. He does show love for his daughter, Debbie (Imogen Poots), but still allows her to indulge in his philosophy of life and aids her in her cocaine addiction.
Why a film about Geoffrey Quinn, a Liverpool boy who arrived in London from Liverpool with five shillings in his pocket and who became Paul Raymond and who was named the richest man in England in 1992. He died in 2008. Is it the sex? Is it the money? Is it both?
This film, directed by the talented Michael Winterbottom, is the film equivalent of one of those feature articles in the glossy weekend magazine of a prominent newspaper. Read it on a long Saturday or Sunday because it is there and, then, on to next week’s touch-of-scandal special feature.
Paul Raymond. A less charitable person would call him a ‘sleazebag’. His ogling sex drive combined with shrewd business sense and reading what the public (well, a sector of the public), wanted, meant that he moved into Burlesque with immobile nudity in the later 1950s, to girlie shows and theatrical extravaganzas in the 1960s, to publishing Men only in the 1970s, declaring that it was not pornography but, on the evidence of photo-ships and pictures here, he was either self-deceiving, had his tongue in his cheek, or was simply lying.
The film traces his personal life, a hail-fellow-well-met type but dead set against losing money. His wife, Jean, Anna Friel, was his choreographer. Then two children, a country mansion. But Paul Raymond had a roving eye and a hands-on (that sounds vulgar, but it is accurate!), approach to the girls in his clubs. He ditches Jean and takes up with glamorous stripper, Amber (Tamsin Edgerton), who becomes the guest columnist, Fiona Richmond, of Men Only. After some years, she can’t put up with him and leaves.
Meanwhile his daughter wants to follow in her father’s footsteps. She wants to be a singer, then London producer, but lacks real talent. So, over the decades, Paul Raymond builds up his empire, favours the press in his interviews, loses some court cases, is accused of running prostitution in his clubs. When Debbie impulsively marries Jonathan and his hostile son, Howard, turns up from America with his mother for the wedding, ean takes the opportunity for a lascivious cover and photo-story for Men Only. It is that kind of film.
When Raymond died, he left his vast billions to Debbie’s two daughters and, as the end, credits say, a smaller inheritance to Howard of 78,000,000 pounds. Nothing to his oldest son whom he knew little about and who does visit him during the film.
The main humanity in the film comes from Steve Coogan’s performance and personable screen presence, as Paul Raymond and that is in his relationship with his daughter and his grief at her overdose death.
Historically speaking and pop-culturally speaking, he was part of London for half a century. But he would rank low in the list of those who really contributed to London.
12 Random Films…
