Mary and I enjoyed the film Venus last night at home. If for no other reasons, it’s a delightful portrayal of three aging actors, good friends and sometime enemies, in the final weeks and months of life. It illustrates beautifully why old age can be a wonderful thing, not in spite of the aches, pains, disabilities, impotence, and organ failure, but because of them. When a good bowel movement becomes the best thing that happens today, life has truly been reduced to the simple pleasures. It helps if you’ve learned a few lessons along the way.
I’m not nearly so old yet, but I can begin to see it from here.
Peter O’Toole is wonderful as the aging, lecherous actor, equal parts charming and creepy. Together with his two friends, played always with either bawdy or subtle comic undertones by Leslie Phillips and the laughably rotund Richard Griffiths, the film could have stood its ground on just that one theme. But it quickly develops into yet another variation on Pygmalion when Phillips takes in the young and rather coarse daughter of his niece as a nurse/caretaker. O’Toole goes to work immediately, but it’s lechery and not transformation that motivates him.
The plot thickens when the girl, called Venus by O’Toole, turns out to be as much a predator as he is. In the end, they’re all equal parts repellent, charming, and even lovable. More lessons get learned.
Splendid acting around and an interesting if disturbing moral ambiguity combined to keep us up past bedtime.
In real life, Richard Griffiths is quoted as saying, "If I had my way, all actors over 55 would be issued a 3-lb. wet salmon with which to slap the face of every young, beautiful, successful upstart. 'That's for being so lucky, you bastard!' I would shout. And then, hit them again, if you can." In part, that could serve as a summary of the film if you keep in mind that comedy is a fine tool for suggesting paradox.
No comments:
Post a Comment