Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud were inseparable friends in the early 1950s. They met every day in the Soho district in London and their friendship lasted for years, ending unexpectedly one day – apparently, according to the film, after Freud asked his friend what he thought of one of his paintings. Bacon replied that he would have poured a bucket of paint on it, and the two never exchanged another word.

The friendship between the two most prominent and successful painters in England in the last century seemed a bit strange from the start: The Irish-born Bacon was an extrovert, a compulsive gambler, and gay. Freud, the Jewish grandson of Sigmund Freud, was representative of the English establishment: handsome, elegantly dressed, and extremely private, Freud was a family man who wouldn’t even give out his phone number, according to an assistant who appears in the film along with Sue Tilley, one of his models. The two men’s art was also different: Bacon’s paintings and portraits were distorted and often terrifying. Freud made realistic portraits of men and women, often nude (He sparked a scandal when he painted his adult daughters naked; one of them appears in the film and explains that he wasn’t a typical father.)

The impressive works of both men fill the screen alongside archival footage and interviews, transforming the story of their love-hate relationship into an excellent film about art and its creators.

Before or after the screening search the Modern Art Collection and find Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer” (1964).