This is a film about a lecherous old coot (Peter O'Toole) making one last play for a girl who could easily be his great granddaughter. After he has a prostate exam, he's rendered both impotent and incontinent and the relationship between Maurice (O'Toole) and Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) approximates, sexually at least, that between Salma Hayek and a ham sandwich.

So what, exactly, is special about this? Put another way, is there a straight guy out there who doesn't eye hot younger women and think about how they'd look naked and how it would feel having hot monkey sex with them for hours on end? Every guy does, whether he's happy in his relationship or not. It's just something guys think about. However, there comes a point in every man's life when reality trumps fantasy and we finally come to the conclusion that such things are very unlikely to happen. Not just that, but it's long before this realization that such fantasies cease being interesting, especially to other people. In fact, they're entirely mundane and boring, primarily because every guy on the planet is having them. It's not exactly a shock to me that plenty of old dudes 70 and older have exactly the same kind of fantasies. Does that make them worth exploring? No.

"Venus" plays Maurice's interest in Jessie the wrong way. Just because the guy is old and sex crazed doesn't make his feelings interesting. They're not. What would have been interesting is if the film revealed the pathetic nature of his obsession and explored that in some way. Of course, maybe there isn't any revelation. Maybe that's just how it is. Old age and death are pathetic. Any dignity in growing old is largely mythic. I mean, at one point in the film Jessie puts her fingers in herself and offers Maurice the chance to smell as an effort to "cheer him up." It's the kind of moment where most people look away.

That is just the kind of character interaction that, while perhaps titillating to some, doesn't reveal anything. While we might think that Maurice is simply a formerly energetic lothario desperately scared of dying, odds are he was roughly the same asshole in old age that he was as a young man.