It takes viewing only a handful of the many British films that have made the trip across the pond to the warmth of American theaters in recent years to see that they have quite a few things in common. From The Full Monty to Calendar Girls, Mrs. Henderson Presents to Notes On A Scandal, these movies seem to have cornered the film market on understated performances by actors swathed in heavy overcoats and staid woolens, and are filled to overflowing with chalky gray colors, pop-driven montages, knighted actors, and --- the quality most commonly derided by Americans of the Bruckheimer school -- slow, regal pacing. Venus, the newest of these imports, can check off each of these boxes multiple times. Critics seeking sharper wit away from Hollywood often decry American films as formulaic -- well, the British have their formula, as well, it appears, at least in the movies they rush to U.S. box offices -- and Venus is just such a film.
Remembered for his striking eyes and princely presence, Peter O'Toole, throughout his long career, seemed like he could never help but deliver his lines in a Shakespearean lilt. Instead, in Venus, he plays retired yet randy actor Maurice as a slow, shuffling man of 90, a womanizer with a sweet disposition, an old guy who knows how he likes his whiskey. (Just a little water, otherwise it "drowns.") O'Toole does a credible job making the old man likeable, even when he awkwardly paws the breast of Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), the teenage niece and caretaker of his long-time friend Ian (Leslie Phillips). As their relationship progresses, Jessie, lost in teenage ennui and already having suffered at the hands of men, and Maurice, who nicknames her Venus in homage to a painting of a nude, reclining goddess, gradually develop a tentative friendship and an eventual dependence on each other's unique assets. As Jessie, newcomer Whittaker -- not far removed from her teenage years herself -- reveals through her eyes and the flips of her hair at once a distaste for the lecherous adult world yet a palpable need to be part of it, and as her skirts get shorter and shorter as the film progresses, her understanding of just how adolescent adults can be only grows.
Venus primarily suffers not for its performances -- even Phillips' as Maurice's friend, also an actor but always overshadowed by him, and Valerie (Vanessa Redgrave), Maurice's long-suffering yet tragically powerful wife, are well worth watching -- but rather from its pacing and its transparent plot. Venus follows solidly in the tradition of movies built around aging stars, a fact that becomes apparent early on and overshadows the inevitable ending. With the fate of the characters mainly sealed through some early revelations, the sometimes glacial pace of the plot becomes frustrating, primarily because the scenes featuring O'Toole and Whittaker together -- shopping for a party dress, riding in a `posh' limo, drinking at a nightclub -- are quietly absorbing. In these moments, though the artifice of the movie is always present, the two together elicit the same curiosity such a pair would be greeted with on the streets of London, the tall, pale old man and the blonde, youthful party girl, joined together by friendship and the undercurrents of a libido that doesn't know when to quit.
Unfortunately, these scenes are coupled together with commentary on the nature of fame, the hidden tendrils of sexuality, and the image-conscious world of today's teenagers -- all of which could just as easily have been revealed without the intrusive scenes that telegraph such messages. Rather than leaving the heavy lifting to O'Toole and Whittaker -- who prove themselves more than up to the task- the filmmakers feel that perhaps a geriatric performer and an inexperienced actress are best shored up by less opaque imagery. What is lost in these more obvious scenes is something that, as any of the veteran cast should know, often reveals much more than a page of lines: the almost silent movements of an old man's hand, the glistening of a young woman's eyes or the melancholy of an old actor giving his last performance.
