The Unofficial Peter O'Toole Pages!

Note: plenty of nice shots of O'Toole's arrival at the London Film Festival at GettyImages.com.

O'Toole sees 'Venus' for first time at London Fest

Peter O'Toole dashed all rumors of poor health by showing up Thursday night — looking dashing and chipper, no less — at a fete for "Venus" at the London Film Festival. Admittedly, he appeared a bit feeble, too, but also frisky and happy to be there.Never known to miss a round of free drinks with pals, O'Toole attended a cocktail reception held at the National Gallery, which was the setting for a key scene that gave the film its title. In it, O'Toole's character takes the sassy young tart he lusts after (Jodie Whittaker) to see a painting that makes him think of her: Velazquez's portrait of Venus.O'Toole and Whittaker hung out a lot at the gala, laughing and chatting with costars Richard Griffiths and Leslie Phillips plus distinguished guests like London mayor Ken Livingston. Then O'Toole attended a screening of "Venus," seeing for the first time. Immediately afterward, he embraced director Roger Michell, congratulated him enthusiastically and told the audience how much he loved the film.This was the first public outing for O'Toole since he canceled his scheduled appearance at the Toronto Film Festival at the last minute in early September, blaming an attack of "gastric nasties." Since then he's conducted phone interviews with the L.A. Times and Esquire and conducted a satellite press tour from London with members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in Los Angeles. He will skip the premiere of "Venus" at the American Film Institute festival in L.A. in early November, but plans to spend significant time in Oscarland in January and February.

Venus - review by timesonline's Wendy Ide

ROGER MICHELL’S latest film is, first of all, a love letter to youth. But if there’s a covert affair happening on the side, it’s with London, a city that many film-makers inhabit but which the director clearly cherishes.Venus is Michell’s second collaboration with the writer Hanif Kureishi, after The Mother, and the two films bear superficial similarities. Both deal with that bothersome issue of sexuality — where society would prefer to pretend that it didn’t exist — in those whom old age has stripped of their visibility and, in the case of Venus’s raffish protagonist Maurice, even the ability to perform. But while The Mother was a colder, more clinical film, Venus is steeped in bittersweet romantic yearning.Peter O’Toole is clearly having a whale of a time as the veteran actor Maurice, an incorrigible rogue who has trouble accepting that he is several decades past his sell-by date. His daily highlight is a breakfast of fading champions in a Kentish Town café. He barters a smorgasbord of prescription pills over tea and toast with Ian (Leslie Phillips), a finicky old luvvie clinging to the dusty laurels of “his Caesar” from half a lifetime ago. Their exchanges are delicious: bitchy backstage banter that is as effortless to these half-forgotten stage legends as hitting their marks.When Ian’s grand-niece comes to visit, he entertains hopes that she might be able to rustle up a nice bit of fish for him every evening. He is to be deeply disappointed. Maurice, however, is thrilled with the new addition to his circle. Jessie (the newcomer Jodie Whittaker) is sullen, inarticulate, aggressive and, despite herself, slightly intrigued by this raddled old roué. She makes him feel alive again. He rediscovers his city — the galleries, the Thames, the bars sticky with spilt Bacardi Breezers — through her eyes. He allows himself to fall in love a little, not so much with her, perhaps, as with what she helps him to remember about himself.Maurice is a gift of a role for O’Toole. He is both irreverently playful and profoundly affecting. Whittaker has a tougher job. Not only is she pitched in at the deep end opposite a cast of national treasures, but she also has to work with a character that seems rather underwritten. Jessie is the one character that you feel that Michell and Kureishi had trouble getting to know. Initially, she’s a bundle of antisocial teenager tropes — pot noodles and alcopops; tattoos and tarty gear — a one-woman demonstration of an old man’s grumble about what’s wrong with youth today. If we warm to her by the end of the film, that’s largely due to Whittaker’s sterling work in bringing Jessie in a convincing arc without losing her bolshie, abrasive essence along the way.

One foot in the door, the other in the grave
By Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard

Any film with Peter O'Toole and Leslie Phillips as Maurice and Ian, two eccentric veterans of the stage, old friends who josh each other in semi-retirement, ought at least to have a modicum of entertainment in it.And Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi's comedy about the awkward late autumn of life, when you can't do what you'd like to and don't like doing what you can, certainly has that.O'Toole and Phillips know exactly how to make the most of good lines and how to mask poor dialogue. And it isn't their fault that this curious mixture of sentimentality and sharpness ends up seeming more than a trifle glib.It's partly because, in trying for something deeper than facile and rather patronising laughs at aged cantankerousness, neither the writing nor direction are quite up to it.The arrival from the provinces of Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), Ian's pretty grand-niece, who proves hopeless at looking after him, prompts Ian to scream but Maurice to take a kinder view of the girl.He sets out to show her the cultural sights of London and, in doing so, grows fond of rather more than her innocent nature. She allows him a few liberties but gives him a good dig in the ribs if he starts to grope.Vanessa Redgrave plays his presumably estranged wife and the straightest of bats throughout as Maurice falls deeper and deeper before realising that he can't and shouldn't win this particular game of love.The film slides queasily around in this emotional and sexual morass until it finally comes to rest as the Grim Reaper beckons and the girl learns that Maurice has taught her a bit about life.But even performances as good as these - and one would certainly include Whittaker as well as the two better-known stars - can't transcend material that hovers between near farce and tragi-comedy without ever landing on a convincing level. Just to watch its actors, however, may well suffice for some.