A New VENUS Meets the Old Lion in Winter: Oscar Calling Peter O'Toole.
Written: Dec 10 '06 (Updated Dec 13 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Bang For The Buck |
 |
|
|
Pros: A magnificent performance by Peter O'Toole. A scintillating feature film debut for Jody Whittaker. Everything.
Cons: Some critics may misconstrue this December Song as pedophilia, which it is not.
The Bottom Line: VENUS presents a funny, warm, life-affirming portrait of an old actor, who becomes Pygmalion for an uncertain country girl, seeing her into womanhood. A great films of its kind.
|
|
|
| macresarf1's Full Review: Venus |
"The Toilet of Venus," which figures as as an erotic and artistic inspiration in Roger Michell's VENUS, was completed in 1651 by the Spaniard, Diego Velazquez. The painting is renowned for its composition: a young woman lying with her back to the viewer in a perfect "curve of beauty"; controversial for the distorted mirror vision of an older woman a cupid holds up to the face of Venus. It is often thought to be the most glorious nude in the history of painting. Velazquez was 51 at the time, an old man for his day. The work now hangs in London's British National Gallery, where we see it during an important sequence of VENUS.
As Maurice (Peter O'Toole), an old lion of an actor on his last legs, tells Jessie (Jody Whittaker) -- his Venus -- after they've viewed the painting: "She is a goddess. She creates love and desire in us mortals, leading often to foolishness and despair.'
O'Toole, who is 74, and looks it, plays a character led by Jessie "to foolishness and despair" but also to triumph. O'Toole emerges from his role still a lion of the British screen, and for this superb little film, which could have gone so terribly wrong, I would not be surprised if he won an Oscar this year, by playing so adroitly a senior ignoring reasonable public attitudes toward old age and mortality.
[Possibly he will share the limelight with Helen Mirren for her portrait of an old monarch at bay, in Stephen Frear's THE QUEEN.]
----------------
O'Toole's Maurice is an actor now of the second rank, who has played some good parts on the stage, the movies and television, who fields an occasional casting call from his agent, but as VENUS begins, spends most of his days either holed up in his South London flat, or having coffee with a couple of old troupers at the Cabin Cafe, down at the corner. His most faithful pal, Ian (Leslie Phillips), is even less known than he, and they spend time remenicing about their modest days of thespian glory, commiserating over their infirmities, discussing the coming final curtain, or comparing obituaries of former colleagues in the London papers.
It can't raise spirits that the gigs Maurice still may find are often playing old patients on their death beds in TV soap operas. And Ian isn't able to get much work at all.
One morning, Ian has a little better news. Seems that his grandniece has kindly sent her daughter, his great-grandniece Jessie (Jody Whittaker), down from the North to take care of him. He can hardly hold back his anticipation of having his books dusted, his flat cleaned, a nice piece of sauteed halibut waiting for him of a noon. Maurice will have to come over to share in his luck.
The news is accepted with a certain ambivalence by Maurice because he has received word himself that he must have his prostate removed, which will put a crimp in his desires, largely imaginary, but important nevertheless, to remain a carefree play boy.
Not more than a day passes though, when Ian is lamenting that he is being abused, soon to be murdered, he's sure. Young Jessie won't do anything around the house, has over-cooked the fish, has drunk up all his Stoly, Scotch and beer. Maurice ambles along to help his friend, standing well behind him, to discover a full-bodied, slovenly dressed teenager, eating in a casual fashion from a take-out container. This Northern version of Eliza Doolittle will not retreat. She's not going to leave, and she did not come all the way down to London to be only a housekeeper.
Back at the Cabin Cafe, the disarrayed mummers confer with another thespian, Donald (Richard Griffiths), about the possibility of calling the police. But Ian doesn't want the notoriety, and Maurice volunteers to try a different approach.
He offers to show Jessie London.
Using what's left of his pull, Maurice comps them tickets to the theater, and afterwards takes her to a club where he is recognized. Jessie has a better time than she had warily imagined, and proceeds to become drunk, and then sick. Maurice helps her home, takes care of her, and she allows herself to trust him. A friendship begins.
What would she like do do?
"_oh-deling," Jessie mumbles the next day, skoffing a bag of potato crisps.
"Yodeling?" Maurice asks, non-plussed.
"MOD-el-ing!" she corrects him, exasperated.
It's not long before Maurice has found her a position as a model . . . a nude model, not exactly what Jessie had planned. Again she is suspicious, but once she realizes that the job is on the level, and she has overcome her natural modesty, Jessie does rather well. Not before Maurice (in a very funny scene) has disrupted the painters by falling into their midst, trying to catch a glimpse of Jesse from over the top of a screen.
And so, a mostly one-sided romance begins.
Maurice takes Jessie to the National Gallery for a peek at the already mentioned Velazquez's Venus, known as "The Rokeby Venus" after a manor in Yorkshire, where it hung for nearly a hundred years. [Britons would recognize the artistic connection between it and Jessie.] He introduces her to classical music and quotes Shakespeare to her, and he shows genuine interest in her views, her hopes, and ambitions.
Jessie, in return, begins some cautious if blunt flirtation with him. And when she realizes that he is not very well, she clues him into the work and courage of Kylie Minogue. In what would seem a fit of foolishness, Maurice takes her shopping for dresses to match her outings with him. He is pleased to see her out of her baggy gear, and Jessie gradually blooms before our eyes.
Ian and Donald are quite amazed by Maurice's apparent success.
" What do you do for her at your age?" Ian asks.
"It's a very difficult thing," Maurice, no Humbert-Humbert, replies. "I'm nice to her."
True love does not run smoothly, we know.
Jessie begins to stand him up, and the old man pines all day on the Thames Bank, casting him into despair, like an unrequited youth. Speaking of that, a loutish young man turns up, as they tend to, in situations like this one.
Maurice visits his estranged wife, Valarie (Vanessa Redgrave), and receives company but little comfort. He deserted her for a younger actress long ago, and his children have never forgiven him. We must conclude that this situation may come pretty close to being an artistic portrait of Peter O' Toole.
He takes a few tumbles that are more painful than comic pratfalls, and for the first time in his life, begins to lose jobs because of illness. And, in the nature of things, that prostate operation is not nearly so funny as the one he played on TV. It slows him way down, but not entirely as a human being, just no longer quite the proud male.
---------------
Readers might easily conclude that VENUS is maudlin, "creepy," worst of all, morbid, but it is the genius of the picture, and the performers, that none of those adjectives apply. This entertaining and wise study of age and youth in our post-modern times comes across strongly enough to be mentioned along side of HAROLD AND MAUDE, LAST ORDERS, UMBERTO D, or WILD STRAWBERRIES. In other terms, VENUS is a damned good movie!
What we have in VENUS is a variation on PRETTY WOMAN. A powerful man undertakes to make over a young thing. Except, the pretty woman is not initially all that pretty, not gorgeous, not a hooker, though in the beginning, we may have our doubts. And the man has lost most of his power by the beginning of the movie, and will lose the rest of it during the movie's course.
The question is: What remains, then? That remainder is the human equation in a relationship, of any kind.
Roger Michell (NOTTINGHILL, 1999) has teamed with Screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, 1985; SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID, 1987), to create VENUS. [They did THE MOTHER (2003), a bookend movie about female ageing, which starred Anne Reid and set Daniel Craig on way to James Bond.] VENUS is the finest collaboration by Michell and Kureishi so far.
Shot modestly but beautifully by Haris Zambarloukos on video tape, which somehow gives the film almost a French quality, VENUS is also aided by David Arnold's classical score, and songs by Corinne Bailey Rae. Audiences who accept the film's premise will find the ensemble cast, the story and the dialogue make their experience a short but enriching 95 minutes.
[I might note that in 1914, eight years after it was hung in the National Gallery, a feminist took an ax to "The Toilet of Venus" because the day before, leading feminist Mrs. Pankhurst had been arrested. "The Slasher," as she was known, said she picked out Venus because men "gawked at her all day." I trust that misplaced feminism will not attack this VENUS.]
Not just the whole cast, but London, too, works for the picture. For instance, there is a little scene, late in VENUS, when Maurice and Ian have a sort of farewell dinner at a near empty club, where once they were hailed by long gone friends. Then, they wander into St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden ("The Actors Church"). They remark on a couple of old friends buried there, including Boris Karloff. Then, for no logical reason, they start to waltz with each other. Anyone who knows My Fair Lady will understand how perfect for the story that is.
Speaking of the cast, Leslie Phillips (Ian) has appeared in more than 130 films, including THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940 -- as an urchin) and EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987) for Steven Spielberg, but he is best known for the CARRY ON, ______ movies, popular with the British in the late 1950's and 1960's. He is, as always, a splendid foil. And Richard Griffiths, who has also has had a long career as a character actor, mostly known in British Television, right now is being touted for awards in the film adaptation of Allan Bennett's play, THE HISTORY BOYS.
Last Hurrahs, indeed!
On the other end of the spectrum, VENUS is 20 year-old Jody Whittaker's first important role in motion pictures. [Americans should remember that her Jessie, like most British teenagers, has left school to find work at fifteen.] The film, no matter how good O'Toole is, would not work without her ability to convey a rough innocence, a humanity that cuts through the destructiveness of modern pop culture, a primal femininity which gradually allows us to see why Maurice is so hooked on her.
As for O'Toole, VENUS is the best film he has had in 25 years (since MY FAVORITE YEAR, an interim report, the redoubtable BAMBO-BAMBO reminds me). The picture gives him one of his few starring roles in a feature film during that time, and he seems to recognize that, for an actor who created an immortal cinematic figure in David Lean's 1962 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, this picture may be his last Main Chance to blaze a final mark.
William Holden, who had a long, distinguished career as a major actor in motion pictures, not such a notable one as a drinker, liked to tell people that he wanted "a good one to go out on." Before he fell through a coffee table at 58, Holden did have his "good one": Blake Edwards' forgotten S.O.B. of 1981.
For Peter O'Toole, VENUS may be his "good one to go out on."
I hope that audiences and the Academy will recognize that last Main Chance for one of the greatest and most troubled actors of the last 40 years.
----------------
Unlike my usual Epinions, I have not reviewed many of the films I mention here, but one I did, always needs my recommendation:
LAST ORDERS (2001): Fred Schepisi's elegy for the British "Greatest Generation" was underrated in Britain, and ignored in the United States. I consider it, in retrospect, one of the great films of my time at Epinions. With Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, and Ray Winstone. I gave it Four Stars; I should have given it Five. I'll not make that mistake with VENUS. --
http://www.epinions.com/content_58916441732
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Viewing Method: Press Screening
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
macresarf1
|
 - Top 100 |
|
Location: San Francisco, Ca.
Reviews written: 563
Trusted by: 378 members
About Me:
11/7/09: Another Bloody November.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.