I was tempted to book this film at last year's London Film Festival because of the appealing teaming of Peter O'Toole (always a favourite) and Leslie Phillips as two aging actors, but I reckoned that it would quickly get a cinema release. Well, quickly in this instance morphed into three months, but I finally attended a preview showing. There is a lot of pressure afoot to award O'Toole an Oscar for his performance; he's been oft-nominated but never won, and it would certainly be a sentimental choice, but as good as he is here, he has been better, and I somehow don't see him overtaking actors in showier roles this year.
The role he takes could easily be based on his own career, an erstwhile beauty who rages at the dimming of the light signalled by his fragile body and disappearing libido. Strangely attracted to Phillips' young niece played by newcomer Jodie Whittaker, he takes her under his wing with more than a small hope of romantic repercussions. He nicknames her Venus after the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery (oddly enough I had just been to the Velazquez Exhibition there before seeing this movie and that painting is the absolute highlight amongst a group of over-rated court portraits). Being young, she treats him shabbily until it is just about too late, and I found their relationship a little short of acceptable. However, O'Toole is in fact a sight to see and his playing, without too much vanity, a tour de force. His scenes with Phillips are also a delight, and in a few brief scenes with Vanessa Redgrave who plays his ex-wife, we are reminded of just how fine an actor she too is.
1 comment:
Unless the 'strangely attracted' refers to the relative ordinariness of the girl, I can
assure you that there is a hankering after the past in most of us who are past 'it'.
whatever 'it' may be. She obviously understood the attraction and milked it as
much as she could while developing some affection for him even though the lead
up to the end is somewhat melodramatic.
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