DVD Watch: Venus

Venus is a movie for people who love Peter O' Toole. Course, I don't understand the rationale behind anyone not loving Peter O' Toole - so except for those few people who probably don't need to see a movie about a lecherous old man and his complicated relationship with a young girl ... it's a movie for everyone.

OK, so maybe that's just skirting the real issue. The problem with Venus is that the subject material sounds so taboo - a man lusting after a girl who could well be his granddaughter in age - that it feels hard to justify. But when you're in the middle of the movie, it feels so easy to justify. Not just because O'Toole is brilliant but also because the movie manages to deal so earnestly with life and death that at times you forget it resembles a love story. Venus is hardly a tale of erotic fiction - this is not some kind of softcore fantasy. O' Toole's character has more screen time by about a hundredfold which in some way contemplates his advanced age and the ravages it has left on his life than misty images of a nubile girl.

For the most part, the movie is morbid and thoughtful. While O'Toole's emotions for the girl are childish, niave and slightly creepy - the emotions the movie as a whole sells to the viewer are realistic and mature. Venus is a vignette into the world of what it means to have lived and then to simply not be able to live much any more.