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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.
Rating:  - Peter O'Toole's Performance Elevates it From Pedestrian
Peter O'Toole, the highly-esteemed Irish actor ("Lawrence of Arabia," "The Ruling Class,") received a well-deserved 2006 Oscar nomination for the English-made "Venus," though, unfortunately for him, not the nod ( who could ignore Forest Whittaker in "The Last King of Scotland?") But O'Toole did give a genuinely towering performance; and they always say the Oscar voters love you if you allow yourself to look ugly, or disabled, onscreen. O'Toole allowed himself to look ugly/old, and dead onscreen, so I guess that had to count heavily in his favor.
"Venus" is actually a drily funny, unsentimentally witty film, as written by Hanif Kureishi("My Beautiful Laundrette"), and directed by Roger Michell; although its plot is rather pedestrian. It's set among a bunch of aging theatrical friends, and gives viewers a pretty good idea of what their lives might be like. Maurice, (O'Toole), who would generally be politely called a "larger than life character," manages to be a horny, dirty old man, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that we're told a recent needed operation was going to leave him impotent and incontinent. He falls in love with 20-year old Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), the hard, provincial, lazy, little-educated niece of his best friend Ian (Leslie Phillips), who's been sent to look after him in his dotage. Vanessa Redgrave turns in a fine performance as Valerie, still actually Maurice's last wife. Richard Griffiths provides sturdy support as Donald, the third old theatrical friend.
The presence of O'Toole is critical to the film's success: most viewers do know that, in real life, he was one handsome devil as a younger man, and we need to know that in order to believe that a not-so-bright girl of twenty could manage to get to be fond of a man four times her age,and not a millionaire. There also can be little doubt that O'Toole salts many of his lines as Maurice with his real-time lifetime of experience. He might not have won the Oscar, but his performance still makes the movie worth seeing.
Rating: - Unsettling or Uplifting? O'Toole Rises Above The Rest Of This "Venus"
What's not to love about "Venus?" Just seeing Peter O'Toole command the screen in a funny and robust performance may be enough for some. And it is almost, but not quite, enough for me. O'Toole is a legend, there's no denying that--and I appreciate that he can still be at the top of his game! An odd mixture of leading man and cheeky rebel, it's hard not to be captivated by an O'Toole performance. From the classic stories of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Lion in Winter" (my favorite film of all time) to the fantastically underappreciated cult hits "The Stunt Man" and "The Ruling Class," O'Toole has always delivered risky and mesmerizing performances. But, in the case of "Venus," a grand performance does not necessarily make a satisfying film-going experience.
O'Toole stars as a lecherous older man (seemingly a new specialty of his), an aging actor of some renown living in meager circumstances. When his best friend, played by a terrific Leslie Phillips, invites a young woman (his niece's daughter) to stay with him--their world is turned upside down. Phillips abhors young Jessie, Jodie Whittaker, but O'Toole is enchanted. Surly, rude, and genuinely naive and nasty in equal measures--Jessie somehow challenges O'Toole as well as appeals to his manliness. In a somewhat predictable fashion, you know the two will form an unlikely bond and learn about life. But the expected pleasantness of this "uplifting" buddy romance/comedy is slightly less than comfortable when the characters exploit one another all in the name of comedy. O'Toole makes countless inappropriate advances to the girl approximately 50 years his junior (most rebuffed with a bit of slapstick abuse) and Whittaker uses the old man for anything and everything. It's really more unsettling than uplifting.
That's not to say that there aren't parts of the film I admired. I loved Phillips, who gives a great comic performance. Any time the old cronies come together, the film sparkles. I also liked the backstage glimpses of the artistic community--and the nostalgia for the theater/film world of a distant past. There is also an intriguing, if underdeveloped, subplot involving O'Toole's wife--a woman he left behind but who has become a part of his life again.
Ultimately, though, the emotional success of "Venus" depends on whether or not you care for Jessie. Is she someone you want to root for and is her evolution something that you're invested in? Sadly, for me, the answer to these questions was a resounding NO. It's not Whittaker's fault. She has some nice moments. The character, as written and portrayed, is just not someone that I found remotely appealing. I'm not saying that I have to like every movie character--but, in this case, it wouldn't have hurt. This is, after all, a touching comedy of life, love and redemption. With unpleasant Jessie at the film's heart, the movie just never connected with me. Taking nothing away from O'Toole or the other performers, I know the movie was designed to touch an emotional chord--but my cynicism never gave way to genuine feeling. KGHarris, 11/07.
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