In pursuit of Venus
How gorgeous you were! The words are used to describe Peter O’Toole’s character in Venus, a doddery old actor named Maurice, and they’re uttered by Vanessa Redgrave, playing the wife he abandoned years earlier, leaving her with three children under six.
At the end of the movie, a waitress uses the same word, gorgeous, when she spots him in an old newspaper photograph -“ watch closely and you’ll see it too.
The photo was taken in the 60s, when O’Toole first made a name for himself in the title role of Lawrence Of Arabia (1962). No wonder the wicked Turkish bey in that movie lusted after him so fiercely.
In Venus, 74-year-old Maurice is far from gorgeous. Still employable, mostly in bit parts -“ typecast as a corpse, as one character jokes -“ he has to slap himself hard in the face to get himself going in the mornings.
Prostate surgery leaves him impotent and incontinent, but he maintains what he calls a theoretical interest in sex and despite a leaky catheter (young audiences might find these details hard going but hey, growing old is not for the fainthearted) he risks losing all dignity to pursue a teenager named Jessie.
Jessie is a distant relative of Maurice’s best friend Ian (Leslie Phillips, who played memorably campy parts in the Carry On and the Doctor series of British movies from the 60s onwards).
She’s supposedly come to care for Ian, but she’s lazy, surly and a hard drinker, obviously no care-giver. Yet Maurice is taken by her, despite the half-century gap in their ages, and proceeds to show his theoretical interest in her. It’s the beginning of one of the screen’s oddest relationships, at times cruel (on both sides), hilarious, ultimately extremely moving.
Barely a year out of drama school, Jodie Whittaker makes her film debut as Jessie with a performance that makes you realise what a strong year it’s been for women’s roles.
In any other year she’d be honoured with at least a nomination for this but in 2007 she’s contending with such talents as Mirren, Dench, Streep and Winslet. Suffice to say she holds her own with O’Toole, whose role suits him so well it seems to have been written as Oscar bait.
In 2003, he was perturbed when presented with an honorary Oscar for his body of work because he said he was still in the game. With Venus, Hanif Kureishi, warmly remembered for writing My Beautiful Laundrette, has given him the opportunity to prove it.
It’s not the first time Kureishi has collaborated with director Roger Michell, and the pair’s love for their mainly North London locations is almost palpable. Moreover, Kureishi has written a beautiful little part for Redgrave, who in her few short scenes reminds us that O’Toole isn’t the only living treasure in Venus.
Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter movies and soon to be seen starring in The History Boys) also has a memorable role. The pleasures of this low-budget British movie are well worth a trip to the cinema.
