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Venus
By Stephen Farber
Venus is another British film that explores a rather shocking sexual liaison--in this case a flirtation between a man in his seventies (Peter O'Toole) and a woman in her twenties (Jodie Whittaker). The film is written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michell, who last worked together on The Mother, another cross-generational story starring Daniel Craig as a man involved with a much-older woman. Here O'Toole plays Maurice, a yeoman actor who achieved "a little bit" of fame, as he tells Jessie, the slovenly working-class gal whom he meets when she is taking care of her uncle, an actor friend of Maurice's. Although he's aged startlingly since his glory days, O'Toole still has the requisite charm to play an incorrigible womanizer, and he also finds the pathos in the character without begging for sympathy. The surprise of the film is that Whittaker, a newcomer discovered after a lengthy search, matches her legendary costar. She's completely credible as a surly tart, but she also highlights hidden depths in the character. The rest of the cast also shines. Leslie Phillips as Maurice's best friend and Vanessa Redgrave as his tolerant ex-wife add to the tableau of unrequited love; Phillips conveys homoerotic longing for Maurice without belaboring the point.
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