Venus

Viewer Rating:mart1n has rated Venus rating: 2.5 Star

In Venus we see Peter O'Toole who stars as elderly Maurice, an old man in his 70's who is an actor and who divides his time up between his acting and thinking back over some good old times with his long time best friend Ian who is played by Leslie Phillips. But then when we see Ian's grand-niece Jessie played by the brilliant Jodie Whittaker arrive to Ian to look after and take care of him, Maurice soon finds himself more and more increasingly taken with the young woman and so he decides to take young Jessie on a tour or two of some of London's cultural and elegant hotspots and also trying to teach the young tear away a thing or two about life and how it can be a hard life at times. But as you can guess not all goes according to the plan and we notice Maurice ending up learning afew hard lessons also about himself .The emotional and often sexual gamesmanship between the two, where desire is also well guarded by wariness, is handled brilliant with sensitivity and vigor by Peter O'Toole.It is little wonder that he received an Oscar nomination for this role. This is not a film of climaxes. There are not many if any highs and lows during the the hour and a half running time, and it all just plays out exactly as you want and as you would imagine, it is just a moving portrait of an old man clinging so much to what he has left of his life and Peter O'Toole more then show us all that he still has the acting required to hold such a film together. This is a simple but brilliant movie that should be seen. I cant believe its took me this long to catch it, but im grateful i did now.

Review published on the 15 June 2009 20:49