? An aging actor (Peter O’Toole) strikes up an unlikely friendship with a friend’s young niece, who’s just arrived in London.
+ I can’t think of another movie that looks at a relationship like this one. There are plenty of movies about May-December romances, but this isn’t about a romance. Not exactly. Although O’Toole retains enough of his looks, and more of his charm, to remind you of what a man about town his character must have once been, you don’t watch this expecting the two characters to hook up. Nor, I think, does the man himself, not that he wouldn’t want to. Clearly, her youth and looks are much of why he wants to be with her. His kindness is why she wants to be with him, and why his clearly expressed lust doesn’t come off as sleazy. Besides the obvious themes of age versus youth, the script touches upon his sophistication versus her inexperience, his carefree optimism versus her caution and suspicion, and so on, but not in a didactic way. In other words, it doesn’t make too much of these differences, isn’t a story of Eliza Doolittle turning into a fair lady, and hasn’t got a moral lesson. O’Toole, who earned his eighth Oscar nomination, and newcomer Jodie Whitaker are appealing. Vanessa Redgrave appears as the actor’s ex-wife.
- You don’t find many very young women hanging out with lecherous old guys, so the biggest hurdle for a movie like this is to get these two characters together in the first place, and, in terms of being entirely convincing, that was the weakest point. Overall, no one will watch this for the plot.
= *** Like its main character, this film isn’t too introspective. It’s a little film, a pretty pencil sketch rather than a full-on portrait, but a nice one all the same.
reviewed 2/16/07
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