Toronto IFF Mini Preview - Venus

By Anne Brodie Aug 31, 2006, 6:05 GMT

The style is edgy, the tone hearts and flowers, a contrast that works to make Venus original, audacious yet maddening. Shot in washed out grays, there is a yellow object in each scene. The scenes are set in shabby old London bed-sits,

Cafes and industrial wastelands, but the yellow thing reminds us that there is hope in coal dust.

Peter O’Toole and Leslie Phillips are couple of old-timers, major stars of their days ‘I was gorgeous!’ ‘Yes you were!’, so Maurice and Ian tell each during their daily tea meetings, they may be pitiably poor with one foot in the grave, but they are still wringing every drop of life they can out of their moments.

Ian‘s upset one day to find that his grandniece, a sullen country girl, has been sent to care for him. Jessie is rude, uncaring and can’t cook a piece of halibut properly, leaving Ian in apoplectic agony. Maurice suggests a way to get through to her, with kindness. It takes time to respond to someone being nice to her. It’s clear she’s had a painful short life, but eventually, she begins to thaw.

They develop a strange inter-generational bond. She lets him smell her neck and he buys her earrings, he is grooming her for something.  All his life, Maurice has been a scoundrel with the ladies, and sex is the only approach he can think of, even towards a girl at least sixty years his junior.

But she demands more of him. The film is complicated, asking us to witness things we don’t see on film. It’s taboo that such people should fall in love. It’s extremely funny. Ian’s by Maurice side in the old folks wing of the hospital, when Ian looks around, saying ‘I don’t think I need to bother going home’.

It’s also powerfully moving, written by the talented Kureishi, who wrote 'My Beautiful Launderette’ and ‘Sammie and Rosie Get Laid’ laying bare the thing that scares us most – growing old.

The questions are - who will be there for us when we are old, how richly can we live our lives and who will care?

Insanely terrific performances by all, and by Vanessa Redgrave who pays Maurice’ ex-wife.

Playing TIFF Sept. 9, 9 p.m., Elgin Theatre