Venus

Venus must have been a tough sell for its makers. It's the story of an old man that falls in love with a young woman and his not entirely innocent infatuation. Of course the Daily Mail bait plotline aside, the film is actually quite a moving riff on the idea of what it is to be alive, and not just the breathing, shitting and sleeping alive, but what it is to actually live.

Peter O'Toole acts his arse off in what may be the final great performance of a great career. In some ways he's playing a less successful version of himself in Maurice, now reduced to playing the dieing guy on Casualty (at least he's not a corpse in Taggart) and spending his days pissed as a fart reminiscing about how great his life was while he was young performing Shakespeare and being adored by all the bright young things. He does this with old friend Ian, played rather excellently by Leslie Phillips proving what a good actor he can be when not living up to the stereotype he's created for himself. Ian's problem is that he is a hypochondriac and spends what's left of his life worried about every little bad feeling, that this time it'll be the thing to finish him off. In short neither is enjoying the time they have left.

Enter Ian's niece Jessie (another great performance from Jodie Whittaker) who is doing about as much of that there living stuff as the two old yins even though she's only twenty. Life hasn't been great to Jessie. Maurice, being the dirty, well, man that he is falls for Jessie and they all learn a lesson about life, The End.

It sounds a bit twee really. But Venus is anything but. O'Toole and Phillips have a real chemistry as two lifelong friends who essentially drink and swear a lot, much like my mates and me really. The first thing that'll really strike you is how much it plays like comedy show Still Game, just with more fucks and cunts where flips and fuds had to do on the BBC and a lot less of the kooky Asian shopkeeper. Obviously the subject matter also detracts from the fluffy nature of the synopsis. Maurice feels alive because a young woman lets him touch her. She allows it because of an inner deadness brought on by an abandonment of all around her. As I said Venus is anything but twee.

The thing about Venus is that it's a bit of a confusing experience to watch. At times it's very funny and there's some heartwarming moments, but on the flipside it's also a desperately sad movie, not in a tearjerker sort of way, it never stoops to those levels. Instead there's this overreaching sadness not only in those old walking corpses or the empty shell of a girl using an old duffer to feel wanted in the way he's using her to feel somewhat young again but in the prospect that while the film could be read as a group of people learning about what it is to live it can also be read that the only way they were able to do it is through using someone for a shallow sense of happiness.

It's this confusion that stops Venus from being a truly great film and it's present not only in the script but also the style of the film. At times it strives to be gritty and realistic, while at other times it becomes quite stylised in its camera work. The filmakers seem to be a little unsure themselves quite how Venus is meant to play and as such there is an unevenness to the film. It's still a very moving film but it could have done with some stronger decisions behind the camera and in the writing process so it was able to live up to the bravado performances of O'Toole et al in front of it.