If there was an actor who could pull off the part of a dirty ol’ man lusting after a young girl and make it palatable for the masses, Peter O’Toole would be it. In Venus, 74-year old Peter O’Toole, who over 50-plus-year career, has earned the clout of a legendary monolith in cinema, plays Maurice, a veteran actor who befriends his buddy’s great niece, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) a bitchy, whiny Yorkshire lass with aspirations of being a model in London. The love/hate relationship that springs from their meeting is essentially a gender-swapped twist of director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi’s previous collaboration The Mother, but Venus is a funnier, wittier film. It’s a generation gap comedy that pitches its odd coupling at level playing field, and despite venturing into muddy territory, doesn’t tip over into crassness nor does it shy from unsettling the viewer. With a pair of sunken, deeply expressive eyes that’ll mesmerise anyone who looks into them, O’Toole is a bona fide class act, undeniably relishing his foul-mothed, slimey, sugar-less daddy role. But as terrific as he is, Whittaker probably walks away with the picture, her feisty, cockteasing Jessie a wicked star-making dynamo of a performance.