Does Sexy Beast con­tain cinema’s best descrip­tion of love?

Jonathan Glazer’s debut fea­ture is about a hap­pi­ly retired gang­ster whose past comes a knock­ing as he siz­zles in the Cos­ta del Sol. It does not sing its roman­tic cre­den­tials from the rooftops. The most icon­ic image of Sexy Beast is an aer­i­al shot of Ray Winstone’s Gal Dove in yel­low budgie smug­glers and sun­glass­es, sweat shin­ing off his lob­ster-pink body. In the film, the title then appears, played for laughs at the expense of the lead­ing man.

Nonethe­less, Gal is part of a sin­cere love sto­ry that shapes the gang­ster sequences with touch­es so under­stat­ed that they feel like momen­tary hal­lu­ci­na­tions, like a smoke ring in the shape of a heart. Foul-mouthed sociopath Don Logan (Ben Kings­ley) and beady-eyed sociopath Ted­dy Bass (Ian McShane) may force Gal back into crime and vio­lence but it is DeeDee (Aman­da Red­man) who enables him to tread this dark path and then return to her. This all-con­sum­ing love is made explic­it in one phone call, which is the roman­tic pin­na­cle of this film. Our cul­ture usu­al­ly talks about love in ecsta­t­ic, abstract metaphors. It’s eas­i­er to blow this exult­ed emo­tion up than to pin it down but, casu­al­ly, amid all the dan­ger­ous hus­tle and bus­tle, Sexy Beast absolute­ly nails it.

Gal is back in Lon­don. It’s just before the job that he nev­er want­ed to do. He excus­es him­self from a table of brash lad­dy career crim­i­nals to pay a quick vis­it to a restau­rant pay phone. He can’t be long. His love sto­ry holds oth­er sto­ries that must remain secret, but because he is a man in love, because DeeDee as the cen­tre of his world, he must stay in touch, he must keep their sto­ry­line run­ning and not let wrong­do­ing take over the narrative.

He says: ​“I love you like a rose loves rain­wa­ter… like a leop­ard loves its part­ner in the jun­gle… like I don’t know what like. I love you.” These words are a good amuse bouche before the kiss, which is yet to come. Spo­ken by a sim­per­ing roman­tic in an over­wrought voice, they would be too syrupy, but spo­ken in Ray Winstone’s low, mat­ter-of-fact monot­o­ne in a script whose lan­guage is dom­i­nat­ed by ​“fuck” and ​“cunt”, it’s like the inven­tion of poet­ry. DeeDee lis­tens silent­ly. The cam­era shows her alone in the dark. Win­stone might as well be say­ing, ​‘Don’t be fooled by the genre trap­pings, this film is about how love can steer you away from harm.’

The phone call isn’t over yet. DeeDee is still lis­ten­ing. Gal is still talk­ing. He says: ​“I know that you love me because I feel strong.” It’s a prac­ti­cal state­ment. He’s laid aside fan­ci­ful imagery designed to melt his para­mour into a roman­tic state of mind. ​“I know that you love me because I feel strong” is just per­son­al nar­ra­tive fact. There is no more sim­ple or endur­ing­ly pow­er­ful way to describe how it feels to be loved by your beloved. To be held in the high­est regard by some­one you hold in the high­est regard. It adds an invis­i­ble lay­er of some­thing. Sexy Beast shows us what that some­thing is.

DeeDee’s char­ac­ter is at once famil­iar and enig­mat­ic. Aman­da Red­man and Ray Win­stone have a chem­istry that, for the most part, is unspo­ken. They show love by the sup­port they instinc­tive­ly pro­vide for each oth­er against the foul spec­tre of Don who rep­re­sents the gang­ster world. Although, Gal is the cen­tre of the sto­ry­line, when they are togeth­er, they appear as equals and when he has to briefly leave her, he (to para­phrase ee cum­mings) car­ries her heart.

Glaz­er doesn’t show us how Gal used to be in the bad old days, before he got sent to jail and came out and start­ed a new life of lux­u­ry away from Lon­don crim­i­nal enter­pris­es. We don’t know who Gal was before he was in love with DeeDee. All we know is that he wants to be a tran­quil man now, and fuelling his resolve when cir­cum­stances become adverse is the lov­ing con­nec­tion that he has and that he feeds with admir­ing words.

He has pro­tec­tion from slip­ping per­ma­nent­ly back into the way things were, he has strength, he has love. Love’s mir­a­cle come from its non-mirac­u­lous prop­er­ties, from its real-world per­son­al impact, from the way it gives a man the will to dive back into the swamp from which he came and then climb back out of it again, with dia­monds to take back home.