Venus movie review peter otoole biography
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When I watch a movie, I'm always perplexed when the characters behave in ways that are unbelievable to me. I'm always left wondering, "Is it me, or is it them?" (Or—more to the point—is it my own naiveté, or is it the miscalculations of the director, screenwriter, and actors?) When the film purports to be a serious character study, presenting the dramatis personae as men and women in their most unguarded, truthful moments, I feel doubly at sea.
Roger Michell's Venus, from the screenplay by his frequent collaborator Hanif Kureishi, is an excellent case in point. Michell and Kureishi are old hands at tying audience expectations into granny knots, and most of the time—particularly in the 2003 drama The Mother, starring Anne Reid and Daniel Craig—they create unforgettable films of terrifying, punch-in-the-gut power. Venus distinctly is a lighter work than The Mother, and that may be the problem.
Certainly there's no
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8/10
Acting Sans Botox
This is one of those movies that grows on you once the credits are done. Quickly paced, sharply written and deftly acted, Venus is a movie that unfolds so quickly that one is immersed in the action from the very start.
The background is actors living off small pensions and acting jobs in working class London. The cinematography catches the dullness of the surroundings and one is easily transported into this world of sameness, peppered by occasional wonderful lapses back into the magic of acting and well written lines. Their world, and also the girl's world is turned upside down by meeting one another.
O'Toole is wonderful as Maurice, the ex-raconteur who proves that love, lust, flirtation and marvel are attributes that never go away with age. It's a delight to see these feelings rekindled in the old man, and O'Toole is the master of bringing zest and poignancy to the screen. Just going to see him quote Shakespeare is wo
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Venus
Peter O’Toole, 74, plays a still-employable British actor in thrall to a friend’s grand-niece, nineteen-year-old Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). Don’t go, “Eww.” From his 1962 starring debut in Lawrence of Arabia to his hilarious turn in My Favorite Year, O’Toole is that rarest of species: an actor of stature who is also a movie star of genuine glamour. Shockingly, he’s never won an Oscar. The mästare class in acting he delivers in Venus, directed by bekräftelse Michell from a script by Hanif Kureishi, may change all that. His Maurice banters with fellow thespian Ian (a terrific Leslie Phillips) and visits his ex-wife Valerie (a transcendent Vanessa Redgrave radiates wit and grace). “How gorgeous you were,” she says, watching him on the telly in an old movie co-starring the actress for whom he left her and the children.
But Maurice is drawn to the crude personnamn (Whittaker fryst vatten a newcomer to watch), though both know sex would kill