O'Toole stars at his exceptional best

What a great actor is Peter O'Toole. Even when he plays a role full of liver spots, prostate troubles, wrinkles to beat the roly dog and looks at his friends and enemies through those rheumy old eyes, he is an exceptional performer.

He is no longer the ambiguously good-looking character he was in great movies like the David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia, but the penetrating eyes are still there, the voice still carries that understated power, and his ability to break the mould, to become the iconoclast even in traditional roles, is as strong as ever.

This is his film. Every character, every shift of mood, every nuance is the result of his presence on screen or off.

But, before this critic gets too carried away, and if you are not a fan of O'Toole's highly personal style, it is still a very entertaining film. The writing is witty and precise, the cinematic crafting is sure and revealing, and anyone with a vestige of desire for half decent cinema will get more than their money's worth.

Even viewers who just want a well-told tale with a little originality will love it.

But a word of warning to the overseers of public morality. The subject will undoubtedly put off some of our more conservative viewers. You see, O'Toole plays the part of Maurice, an elegantly debauched actor in his 70s, as O'Toole actually is, being born way back in 1932, even if by today's standards he has been made to look more like 90. Maurice is still working, occasionally, or drinking with his equally aged friend Ian, played with startling conviction by the former comic star Leslie Phillips. One day he meets Ian's nubile young great niece, Jessie, the product of yet another virtuoso performance from 25-year-old Jodie Whittaker who looks a sloppy, just-left-school 16, has radical habits, a goth slob boyfriend and seems a total loser, except that Maurice thinks she is the most beautiful creature he has seen in a lifetime of beautiful creatures.

He sets out to woo her, to change her life, and have some serious satisfaction on the way. Ian simply does not see what is going on, Jessie is by turns confused, flattered and indignant, her boyfriend beats up the ageing actor when Jessie lets him into the apartment to pick up any loose cash, and the relationship is by no means a tender and delicate flower.

Maurice eventually gets Jessie a job as an artists' model hence the title Venus and in one of those hilarious sequences at which O'Toole is a past and present master, he falls off a ladder trying to look in over a skylight to see Jessie in the nude.

This film, however, is no superficial comedy. The comic sequences are memorable and frequent, but there is an underlying poignancy which permeates the whole tale.

Despite the ending, which is at once a triumph and a tragedy, despite freedom with which Maurice comments on his world, and some of the genuinely unlikeable people in it, despite the genuine problems of ageing, susceptibility to illness, and the onset of prostate cancer, this is a hymn to age, a triumphal statement about the fullness of lives in which every chance is taken, as well as the cruel turns which sometimes deprive us of taking those same chances.

It is utterly human, wonderfully acted, drama with some chaotic comedy and genuine emotion, and is an enormous tribute to a man who has lived life to its fullest.

Not to be missed.

- © Fairfax NZ News