For her part Jessie, though she may be ignorant, is far from stupid, and she is quick to react to Maurice's condescension, and also to perceive her own advantages. At times the contrasts between them are too obvious and emphatic, but the story's schematic aspects are nicely undercut by the film's quiet, appreciative attention to its setting. Kureishi and Michell both love London and know it well, and one of the best qualities of Venus is its lived-in feeling.
The filmmakers also make canny use of O'Toole's celebrity, though Maurice is probably a few degrees less famous than the man who plays him. At St. Paul's in Covent Garden (aka the Actors' Church), Ian and Maurice pause to read the names of the real thespian dead, whose ranks they will soon join. Vanessa Redgrave appears in a few scenes (too few for my taste) as Maurice's fond, resigned ex-wife.
As Venus moves casually along, a deep sadness starts to gather around its edges, casting a shadow over the mischievous good humor that is Maurice's default mood. His mortality portends a larger loss, the eclipse of an approach to life and art that the great British actors of the mid-20th century, from Laurence Olivier to Michael Caine, embodied with such ease and charisma. It is not easy to define that special, paradoxical glamour O'Toole wears like a well-worn, perfectly tailored jacket — he is a self-made aristocrat, a genuine pretender, a selfless narcissist — but whatever it is, he still has it. Seeing a picture of the young Maurice — the young Peter O'Toole — in a newspaper, someone exclaims, "He were gorgeous." Indeed he were, and so he is.
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