Cinema - Venus

Unorthodox sexual relationships are something of a trademark subject for writer Hanif Kureishi. His debut screenplay ‘My Beautiful Launderette’ told of the same-sex relationship between a gay skinhead and a young Asian man. In the 2001 film ‘Intimacy’ the central relationship was an anonymous weekly coupling in a squalid London basement flat. In 2003, Kureishi teamed up with director Roger Mitchell to produce the taboo-breaking film, ‘The Mother’ about a sixty-something-year-old woman engaged in a graphically sexual affair with a younger man (played by a pre-James-Bond Daniel Craig).

This year’s Oscar nominated ‘Venus’ (also directed by Roger Mitchell) is a sort of inverted sidepiece to The Mother, albeit a less sexually explicit one. Aging actor (Peter O’Toole) spends his days drinking and grumbling with his friends until an end of life crisis is precipitated by the arrival of pal Ian’s (Leslie Philips) great-niece, the nineteen-year-old Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). Whilst Ian is appalled by her foul-mouthed, tanked-up velour-tracksuit-wearing persona, O’Toole is charmed (and aroused) and decides to play Professor Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, dressing up his lasciviousness as kindness. Her education is composed of trips to the theatre and the art gallery where he introduces her to the 'Venus' of the title. Vanessa Redgrave provides an all-too-brief subplot as his long-suffering ex-wife and mother of his children, who provides him with a touching (if undeserved) emotional support. ER