If ever anyone should have accompanied Michael Douglas and sought therapy for Sex Addition it is surely Hanif Kureishi, who is never happier than when filling TV and movie screens with deviant sex. Not content with with writing about a 70 plus woman enjoying sex with a much younger man he now completes the Daily Double with an account of a 70 something Peter O'Toole lusting after a girl in her early twenties. The opening shot is the sea shore which is there for no apparent reason at that stage (at the death, literally, we journey to the sea shore at Whitstable) other than to 'suggest' the birth of Venus as depicted by Botticelli. Kureishi attempts half-heartedly to divert attention from the 'dirty old man' aspects of O'Toole's lechery by portraying him as something of a 'mentor' to Jodie Whittaker's eponymous Venus, opening her eyes to culture, something ripped off from Educating Rita but Willy Russell is in no position to sue having himself ripped off Pygmalion. What we are left with is an undoubtedly outstanding performance by O'Toole which is light years above the material plus some equally fine support primarily from the luminescent Vanessa Redgrave closely followed by Leslie Phillips and Richard Griffiths. Kureishi is, of course, a darling of the pseuds so it is more or less superfluous to refer yet again to Burns Mantle's query in his review of the Original Broadway production of Pal Joey in 1949 'can you draw sweet water from a foul well'. I know what I think but then I'm not a pseud.
Review of Venus
