December 27, 2006
Venus is first and foremost an actors film. The casting of mercurial talent like Peter O' Toole, Leslie Philips and Richard Griffiths. Even Jodie Whittaker is an actor of budding talent winning a gold medal for her acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2005. The film is instantly watchable for these talents alone but less so for the script from Hanif Kureishi. This is surprising as I greatly admired his last film The Mother. Venus like this film is the story of a much older character having a relationship withs someone younger with sex being present, physically in the Mother and mentally in Venus. Cinema is adept at using age opposition to great affect, Gods and Monsters is but one. Venus is very much in the tradition of what we could term 'mind the age gap cinema' with Harold and Maude up their with the best. O'Toole plays the character of Maurice an aging actor, still in the game but his glory days are long gone. When he is introduced to his actor friends niece played here by Whittaker, her beauty as seen from Maurice's eye is not dented by her behavior traits that would not be out of place on the Catherine Tate Show.
Like Visconti's Death in Venice, his fast approaching mortality, his past years as something of a ladies man leads him into an a seductive relationship dressed up as an attempt to give the girl a cultural education. And so he does taking her to the National Gallery were upon he shows her Vasquez's painting Venus. The age gap as the relationship develops does not add depth but on to many occasion's is played for laughs. One such clumsy attempt has Maurice leering at her with the help of a waste paper basket with the inevitable consequences. Consequently his late in life liaison with a young women does not give Maurice the uplift and zest for life but instead hastens his decline, this I suppose is the tragedy. What depth their is, O'Toole conveys it and ironically the films stand out scene is his emotional dinner with his f
