O'Toole's `Venus' is a marvel

Four years ago, Peter O'Toole expressed dismay at receiving an honorary Oscar, saying he was ``still in the game.'' The transporting performance he gives in ``Venus'' proves that he was not kidding.

Told with wit, genuine poignancy and all kinds of humor, ``Venus'' charts the unlikely relationship between a man in his 70s and a young woman some 50 years younger. This is a relationship unlike any we've seen, and it's a measure of the film's subtle gifts that it is easier to watch it unfolding than to precisely define what we're seeing.

For though it looks to be about things fleeting and ephemeral, ``Venus'' touches, without forcing anything, on what matters most in life: love, friendship, connection. It's about aging and what keeps you alive, about the getting and passing on of the wisdom of a lifetime. And it is done with such surpassing skill on both sides of the camera that we can't help but marvel at it all.

It starts with the work of two of Britain's most adroit film profe