‘Venus’ scores with perfect casting

In theaters

VENUS, directed by Roger Michell, written by Kanif Kureishi, 91 minutes, rated R.

The new Roger Michell film, “Venus,” stars Peter O’Toole in a moving, Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actor as Maurice Russell, an elderly, London-based actor who enjoys his share of drink and the carefully lobbed bon mot, and who has yet to deliver his swan song when it comes to the female pursuit.

If the movie seems a perfect fit for O’Toole, it is.

Based on Kanif Kureishi’s script, “Venus” is eager to blur the lines between O’Toole’s character and his off-screen persona, but that’s hardly the only way the movie generates interest.

Beneath the film’s initial high moments of comedy lurks a serious drama about aging. It’s a movie that recognizes that in old age, our minds might remain bright with humor and mischief, but our bodies nevertheless are designed to betray us. Coming to terms with that unwanted truth is what gives “Venus” its emotional final act.

The film’s key plot line involves Maurice’s relationship with Jesse (Jodie Whittaker), the crude, unmannered grandniece of his best friend, Ian (Leslie Phillips), a fellow actor who defines high maintenance. Like her uncle, Jesse also is something of a handful, though she isn’t nearly as endearing. She’s closed and unhappy, a brittle young woman filled with such rage that she seems determined to spoil her otherwise attractive exterior.

Maurice recognizes her rage as pain. For him, she’s his Venus and what develops between them is a complicated relationship of sensual and financial give and take – he gives her diamond earrings and a new dress, she allows him to kiss her neck and caress her hand. For some, their tenuous bond will prove uneasy, at best, particularly since Maurice is 50 years Jesse’s senior. But the way it’s handled here makes for a satisfying study of two different generations armed with their own set of needs.

For Maurice, who sits up in bed late at night, alone and unable to sleep, that need is to touch and to be touched. A need so great that he’s hardly above paying for it. As for Jesse, her relationship with Maurice infuses her with a rush of self-confidence she never had. She knows she’s in charge of how close they will become and it emboldens her, so much so that at one point she becomes reckless with Maurice’s life, which brings them – and the movie -to a turning point.

While the story occasionally veers out of focus, taking unnecessary detours that detract from the core, this never is true for the performances, which are spot-on. Vanessa Redgrave is particularly affecting as Maurice’s ex-wife – she and O’Toole share some of the movie’s most satisfying scenes. Likewise for Whittaker, whose presence is akin to a bruise. Still, this is O’Toole’s movie, and what he develops behind Maurice’s mask of fragility and longing is a character who resonates and, fittingly, who touches.

Grade: B+

On Blu-ray

ENTRAPMENT, directed by Jon Amiel, written by Ron Bass and William Broyles, 113 minutes, rated PG-13.

Jon Amiel’s “Entrapment” may have been written by Ron Bass and William Broyles, but it owes its soul to screenwriter John Michael Hayes.

Hayes, who summered in Maine while writing some of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films, including “Rear Window,” wrote Hitchcock’s 1955 caper “To Catch a Thief,” which featured Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in a movie about a reformed cat burglar suspected of stealing jewels along the French Riviera.

The caper film became so popular, it was satirized in the 1960s by Blake Edwards’ “The Pink Panther” and Jules Dassin’s “Topkapi” before being resurrected in the 1980s by the recently deceased novelist Sidney Sheldon, whose best-selling book – and subsequent television miniseries – “If Tomorrow Comes” featured a gorgeous female cat burglar who loved to loot in exotic locals.

“Entrapment” has loot and exotic locals to spare, and what it may lack in sustained thrills it more than compensates for in the inspired casting of Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. These two have such chemistry, charisma and sex appeal, they could carry even the most predictable of plots – such as the one tucked within “Entrapment.”

The film begins boldly and with style: On the roof of a 70-story Manhattan skyscraper, an unidentified person leaps into the darkness and plummets by cables to one of the offices midway down. There, a $28 million Rembrandt is stolen, but before leaving, the thief reveals a sense of humor by replacing the Rembrandt with a painting of Elvis. Nice touch, though some wish it was Elvis who left the building.

The film cuts to Virginia Baker (Zeta-Jones), an insurance investigator who is so certain the Rembrandt was stolen by the infamous thief Robert MacDougal (Connery), she decides to use her mind (not to mention her body) to trap him in a complex plot that finds her joining him in heists around the globe – including a daring robbery in Scotland and another in Kuala Lumpur on the eve of the millennium.

Filled with ridiculous plot twists and surprise scenarios, “Entrapment” is a hive of impossibilities, for sure, but director Amiel knows he has the gift of his two stars, who are so good, so well-paired and so right for these roles, they consistently make it a pleasure to suspend disbelief.

Grade: B