REVIEWED - VENUS:Comic and touching acting distinguishes this bittersweet, cross-generational love story, writes Michael Dwyer
HAVING worked together on the TV miniseries of The Buddha of Suburbia, screenwriter Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell reunited for the 2003 feature The Mother, in which a widowed grandmother (Anne Reid) falls for a man (Daniel Craig) who is half her age. Venus, their third collaboration, reverses the genders and stretches the age gap.
Peter O'Toole plays Maurice Russell, an irascible elderly actor who finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), the 19-year-old grandniece of his best friend and fellow thespian, Ian (Leslie Phillips).
Maurice and Jessie are polar opposites in every respect. He spouts Shakespearean sonnets while she smokes, eats junk food and guzzles beer. But gradually Jessie responds to the caring attention Maurice offers.
When he takes her to the theatre for the first time, he chooses an expletive-littered production at the Royal Court as the most likely play with which she might empathise. The suspicion lingers that Maurice has an ulterior motive, and this is fuelled when he sets her up as a nude model at an art class. Her pose recalls the Velazquez painting Venus, from which Maurice borrows his pet name for her.
There are echoes of Pygmalion and the variation on its theme in Educating Rita, as well as shades of Lolita, as these two lonely people give comfort to each other along the rocky road towards achieving mutual respect. While Maurice has retained his lifelong capacity for lust, he regrets that his many medical treatments have limited his sexual interest in her to "theoretical".
Their relationship is treated delicately and credibly in this melancholy, bittersweet movie, in which most of the principal characters are of an age to be acutely aware of their mortality. Maurice, Ian and fellow actor Donald (Richard Griffiths) spend their mornings in a cafe, leafing through the obituary pages and noting the number of column inches given to their former colleagues.
A photograph of Maurice in his youthful prime is particularly resonant, as are the poignant scenes between him and his ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave). One memorable close-up of O'Toole and Redgrave together reminds us of how beautiful they were when they first lit up cinema screens with their star quality back in the 1960s. Both are still radiant, and glowing with screen presence.
As Ian, Phillips seizes on one of the meatiest parts of his long career, and newcomer Whittaker impressively holds her own in such august company.
The movie, however, belongs to O'Toole, who is on peak form for a lovely, witty and endearing portrayal that earned him an eighth Oscar nomination this year. He didn't win, yet again but, gaunt and frail as he now looks, one trusts that another juicy role awaits him and that he finally will realise his clearly passionate ambition to add a competitive Oscar to the honorary one he received four years ago.
