|
|
Rating:  - Venus-Peter O'Toole as a Dirty Old Man Out of Control
I think I can be brief with this review as I don't wish to spend too much time or emotion over it. The story is a pathetic romp through the mud and I can't believe that O'Toole would permit himself to portray a dirty old man in heat.
Those of you who are long time fans of O'Toole would probably do well to avoid this film as I have been an admirer of his work for my entire life and felt badly for him after viewing it.
Those Amazon reviewers awarding 3 stars or less to this movie agree with me and I don't give a dam what Hollywood said about this film.
Rating:  - The tantalizing feminine alluring!
Venus is an emblematic movie that deals with the human condition of a respectable actor, beloved and loved by many women in the past who lives on the verge of the forgetfulness, isolated and imprisoned between his memories (Like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard) ; nevertheless Maurice is still an avid observer of the human condition and from time to time makes secondary roles.
The arrival of a provincial and alluring young woman, who comes for the first time in her life to London, niece of his best friend, will arouse for both of them new horizons of unsuspected consequences, she is the unreachable muse for him but he has the spelling magic of the word; once more the wisdom and experience face with the missing energies of an unbridled youth that is aware it has all the time of the world for acting and mistaking, on the other side of the street, Maurice is well conscious the time is a no removable resource and enjoys every single moment of his existence, due a painful prostrate cancer may annihilate him in any moment.
However, the approach of the film is far to be tragic; on the contrary, it's a celebration of life a song for these splendid and irreversible moments that must be lived with Dionysian intensity, no matter what the rest of the world think.
Peter O`Toole gives an astonishing and vivid performance as the dying actor; and Roger Mitchell shows us his skills and superb god taste behind the camera, who works out as a peeping tom; needless to say as an extension of Maurice's personality.
There are flashes of the last film of Don Luis Bunuel "That obscure object of desire" , but the film will preserve itself as a cult movie for the future viewers.
Rating:  - The Twilight of the Mod
When the Academy Awards wanted to give Peter O'Toole an honorary Oscar, he initially refused, saying that he still felt he was quite in the running for a Best Actor and didn't want to ruin his chances with any "lifetime achievement" awards.
I wonder if the makers of "Venus" were listening. It certainly looks that way: the role of Maurice appears tailored for O'Toole in every scene...and it worked. O'Toole received another Oscar nomination for Best Actor (he lost to Forrest Whitaker).
I remember reading in Richard Burton's biography that both he and O'Toole shared the same record: most Academy Award nominations without ever winning. 7 or 8, I believe. So now O'Toole has 8 or 9, nearly 25 years after Burton's death.
It's a great role for a great actor...but I don't know if it's a great movie for everyone. Some of it worked, some of it might offend or annoy people. (I've noticed some reviews take O'Toole's age and lecherous advances to task. I have to admit that some of the scenes made me uncomfortable: the sight of a very elderly man trying to bribe kisses and gropes from a very young girl, for one! If you didn't keep in mind that this was Peter O'Toole, Lawrence of Arabia, the 60's swinger from "What's New, Pussycat?", you might think he was just another very dirty old man).
The movie does succeed in the weird desires and awkward moments of an old man enchanted by a young girl. She's hardly deserving at first (which was interesting) and I felt bad for the old dude when he realizes he's just being used while a young punk boyfriend loiters outside smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk. But who do you root for? It's real...but the hope of happy ending is impossible.
If you enjoy great acting, you'll like this movie. If you're looking for a whimsical romance...you might be challenged.
Most of it worked for me because of Peter O'Toole.
(Why do films insist on showcasing foul-mouthed old people? The only ancient potty mouths I've seen are in movies, not real life. Hearing Katherine Hepburn mutter the F-bomb in Warren Beatty's remake of "An Affair to Remember" or Peter O'Toole exchange the same word over and over with another old man in "Venus" is hardly groundbreaking or all that entertaining, to be honest. If I want a cussing geezer, I'll just watch Ruth Gordon in Clint Eastwood's monkey movie, "Every Which Way but Loose." That's about the level of that gag).
Rating: - Interrogating Eros, and Nothing Else
This movie has some good moments.
But it is also wildly uneven in its tone.
Is it whimsical? Is it savage? What's going on here?
I think that the underlying problem is that the writer, who also wrote "My Beautiful Launderette", comes from the London milieu that he writes so well about. That world view takes for granted that all the "isms", all identifiable philosophical approaches to life, have been exhausted and proven not to work. Save perhaps a gentle absurdism and an interpretation of multiculturalism as all-leveling.
That leaves 2 hours of movie script to fill. So the writer has interrogated the theme of eros as a momentary connecting quality in a decentered universe, as he did with "My Beautiful Launderette". All of the characters in this movie are "lost" in reminiscence about the power, the connection, and the moment of eros. Maurice and Jessie even try to kindle a desperate version of it. "That's all there is" says Maurice.
Unfortunately for the writer, that turns out to be not such a gentle or benign observation. Almost against the writer's will, in a subconscious subtext, these characters are yearning for additional human value beyond the eros that the years have eclipsed. But the writer couldn't deliver it, because he obviously doesn't believe in it.
All the scenes portraying Jessie's friends and their club world flash by unexamined and uncared for. The writer sees no redeeming value there apparently.
The barbarity and cruelty of what Jessie and her boyfriend do to Maurice, both psychologically and physically is shocking and just turns the second half of the film against the first half. But it is also never interrogated by the writer. It just happens, leaving the viewer dumbfounded. The play-within-a-play where Maurice is filmed "playing a corpse" is materialized in the movie's universe and Maurice does in fact play a corpse at the end, sitting next to Jessie. The tone here is again sharply disturbing. No gentle fade on Maurice finally at rest by the sea -- the camera tilts him out of frame jarringly like so much garbage as Jessie panics and runs about yelling. The viewer shudders.
The fluffy redemption sequence at the end for Jessie seems tacked on like an afterthought. Who knows, perhaps the writer and director had planned to end on a down note with Maurice at the beach. It's a shocking conclusion after the warm first half of humor. That would have made a statement. But instead the production (the money people, perhaps) chose to "balance" the tone of the conclusion with the humor at the start. Too late though, for, as I have said, the film is already too wildly uneven.
But what allowed this loss of control, I think, is that the writer (and director) didn't have anything more to say after interrogating the sexuality, or the remembered sexuality, of its characters. Maurice and Jessie have a disjointed series of connection experiences, but after all she didn't learn any wisdom from him and betrayed him horribly. And he didn't have much wisdom to offer other than "sex is good". That's ok so far as it goes, but it is a severely limited perspective. His connection to his ex-wife is more an exposition of disconnectedness. They mention their children in a one line exchange about money, and done with it.
The writer missed an opportunity here to include an interrogation of the place of art in peoples' lives, particularly the aging actors and the young people coming up. Maurice and his friends never muse over past great performances they have seen, or given, as you would think aging actors might. Or they might discuss what the hell Shakespeare was doing when he had Hamlet address his step-father as "Mother", etc. Maurice takes Jessie to a play, but all Jessie can come up with is a weak "I could never do that." This is no "Educating Rita".
The writer might consider thinking more about the parent cultures in the London melting pot. I'm sure that there could be more interesting stories about Pakistani, Indian, Jewish, Irish, and English human values. Eros is a strong part of our individual and cultural experience. But it is not the sum total, except for old-guard partyers like Maurice (note the memorial reference to Robert Shaw) and new-guard partyers like Jessie and her boyfriend. "That's all there is" said Maurice. Wrong.
What's really disturbing about all this is the reception that "Venus" enjoys, as evidenced in the fellow reviews here. Sheesh! This film is not a celebration about human "possibilities". That it is so regarded is a very morbid testament to the fact that, sadly, this film got it right in many respects. That is, the multicultural landscape has already leveled human expectations to a near-zero; so much so that young people out there see this Chinese-corners version of the human heart as an uplifting statement.
Guess I'm in no rush to go clubbing in London!
Rating: - Quality never gets old!
While not a film for everyone, Venus has enough to satisfy even the most hardened film buff. Peter O'Toole delivers a stellar performance not because of over-acting but becase of restraint. Even more importantly, he allows a young actress an opportunity to not only rvial his quality but to spar with him at a level rarely seem in modern cinema.
Many people will never bother to see Venus. It will be their loss.
|
|