There is no linear plot. Most of the action takes place in Bacon's disheveled, light-slashed London studio or in the viperous atmosphere of the bars where the painter held court in the 1960s.
Colors are bilious and raw, fading into shadow.
Faces distort and multiply through the lens of wineglasses or in mirror reflections, or through the sheer booziness of the atmosphere. Come to bed and you can have whatever you want. Dyer did, and he never left. The masochistic Bacon was sexually submissive, but his social domination of Dyer was total. Visually, the film is a success.