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Venus Beauty Institute More at IMDbPro »Vénus beauté (institut) (original title)

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22 reviews in total

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22 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
Very pink, 1 August 2004

Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

This stars Nathalie Baye, not Audrey Tautou, of Amélie (2001) fame. (She has a supporting role.) Baye is Angèle, a 40-year-old Parisian beautician who has loved and lost a few too many times. Indeed, as the film opens we (and Samuel Le Bihan as Antoine) watch and hear her being dumped once again. Well, she is careless with men. She is perhaps too "easy." She picks up men, the wrong ones. She is aggressive in her desire. And now she has become cynical. All she wants now are one-nights stands, no more love, no more unbreak my heart. Love is too painful.

So when Antoine falls in love with her at something like first sight (I do have a weakness for love at first sight: it is so, so daring, and so, shall we say, unpredictable) she rejects him out of hand even though he is a vital and handsome artist, confident and winning. What IS her problem? But he pursues her even though he is engaged to another (Hélène Fillières). And when she gets drunk and wants some casual sex with him, he says no. He wants her fully in control of her faculties.

So this is a romantic comedy of sorts centered around a beauty parlor. However any resemblance to Hollywood movies in the same genre (Shampoo (1975) and Hairspray (1988) somehow come to mind) is purely coincidental. Here the salon is brightly and colorfully lit with a tinker bell as the door opens, and the clientele are eclectic to say the least: an exhibitionist who arrives in a raincoat and nothing else; a rich old man lusting after Tautou; a woman with oozing pimples on her...(never mind)...etc.

What makes this work so well is a completely winning performance by Baye, sharp direction by Toni Marshall, and a kind of quirky and blunt realism that eschews all cliché. Tautou fans will be disappointed in her modest part, but she is just adorable in that role. The voyeur scene in which she is willingly seduced by the rich old guy may raise your libido or your envy depending on where you're coming from. Ha!

See this for Nathalie Baye who gives the performance of a lifetime, simultaneously subtle and strong, vulnerable and willful. She makes us identify with her character and she makes us wish her love.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

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13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Woman losing her youth finds love., 26 October 2003

Author: senortuffy from Glen Ellen, CA

This story revolves around the employees of a beauty shop in Paris. It's not quite an ensemble piece because there is a main character.

Nathalie Baye plays a 40-year-old woman, Angèle, who is going from one fling to another. Angèle doesn't believe in love anymore. She thinks it only brings pain and that love is a form of slavery. She's a very attractive woman but looks sad all the time and her friends notice.

Audrey Tautou plays Marie, another worker at the salon, and she's a plain country girl who starts having an affair with a much older man. Mathilde Seigner plays Samantha, who is tough on the outside and has lots of boyfriends, but is hurting inside (she tries to kill herself on Christmas Eve).

But Angèle is the focus of this film. We see her sitting with a man in a train station cafe at the beginning of the film, confident that he's enamored with her, but he brushes her aside, saying it was just an affair, and walks away. Then Madame Nadine, the beauty shop owner, tells her she needs to fix her appearance and apply more makeup, which only adds to her depression.

Along comes Antoine, a much younger man, who saw the spat at the train station and who follows Angèle back to where she works. He approaches her and professes his love for her, really his obsession for her. Angèle isn't interested in a relationship and Antoine isn't interested in casual sex, so things don't look good for the pair. But as the story progresses, she opens up to him and by the end they're both in love with each other.

I would have liked the film more than I did if the character of Antoine had been different. He's got a good physique and is much younger than Angèle, so I can see why she'd be attracted to him, and she's a good-looking woman, so I can see him being attracted to her, but as two people, I didn't really see the chemistry between them. Antoine seemed a bit too immature to make this romance seem true. But he is open and tender, and Angèle is vulnerable and needs some extra care, so maybe that's the key.

Anyway, the characters were all interesting and the acting well-done. There was a tender poignancy in the relationships between the people in the beauty shop and their customers, as well as some pretty funny scenes, and the film explores some adult themes about the nature of love and relationships, so I would definitely recommend this one even if it might have been better.

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11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Very interesting, 24 August 2000

Author: Andres Bermudez from Bogota, Colombia

Venus Beauté Institut is clearly one of the best films of the year in France, and not due to the fact it won the César as best film; it truly is a good film, contrary to what many people think. For starters the film has an excellent screenplay, and everything fits in quite nicely. It was very well directed by Tonie Marshall, in a simple, efficient and clear way (if you're looking for flashy directing look elsewhere). The story is also quite simple, but anyone (including men) can relate to it, for it deals with the most common human emotions: love, loneliness, friendship, sorrow, and happiness; and what's truly inspiring is the simple and humorous way these emotions have been conveyed. As for the acting, I can only say one thing: what an incredible cast. Nathalie Baye was superb as the lonely Angèle, and the entire supporting cast is excellent: the socialite and oppressive Madame Nadine (Bulle Ogier), the sweet and naive Marie (Audrey Tautou), the troubled Samanthe (Mathilde Seigner), and the breathtaking Madame Buisse (Claire Nadeau). Also, this is not the typical art house French film that many people detest, it is a very simple human statement, wonderfully taken to the screen.

I recommend it.

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13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Good Bittersweet Movie, 4 December 2000

Author: sharkfinsoup from Chicago USA

This movie has some fine acting. It is driven by character rather than plot. Nathalie Baye, as Angèle, plays a 40ish beautician in Paris. She has had a traumatic childhood and has been burned in love so she limits herself to one-night stands where she is in the driver's seat. Then a man obsessively falls for her and she has to decide whether to open up to love, or at least the possibility of it. This does not play out quite the way it would if this were a Hollywood high concept movie.

There are many minor characters, affectionately drawn. Some pieces of Angèle's past never quite get explained or resolved, which some people might complain about, but, hey, life is a lot like that.

This film is set in Paris, right before and right after Christmas. (I also saw "La Buche" at the same theater, also set in Paris at Christmas, also very good)

The jazzy score is particularly nice.

This is not exactly an upbeat Christmas movie, but it's well worth seeing.

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9 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Lots of girl talk: love with a hard edge; like it is. ** SPOILERS **, 25 January 2003

Author: TimeForLime from Texas

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I disagree with the critics who find this film to be mostly about the menagerie of pitiful, youth-crazed females who come to the Venus salon for magical potions to hold on to their youth. Take that, of course, for comic relief, but there is much more to this film.

I think there IS a real love story here. Middle-aged love, love the umteenth time around. It's not so easy. This film looks at a woman, and I guess it looks at the woman's point of view as well. She is in control. She chooses the time and the place. Only it isn't love. It is "flings" as the translator calls it. We call it "casual sex."

Angele works as a beautician because she "likes to help people." Or maybe she does because she disfigured an important lover in the past, and is still making amends. She doesn't want to move up to management, despite her age (40 and climbing), despite advice to do so by the mangeress of the house.

She just wants to be "one of the girls." That's this persona she clings to, and she's better at it than the twenty-somethings that surround her. Only they are happy, mostly, and she is not. Her control gives her safety, but not very much passion. She has the sacrificed the "head over heels" kind of loving that is so energizing and young-making.

We join Angele's life at that moment of change, when someone comes along and gives her back what she has been dishing out. A man arbitrarily approaches her, quasi-stalks her, and says, out of the blue, "I love you!"

Now, this is just the thing that one of her girlfriends fantasizes about, a "zipless" love out of left field that leads to perpetual union, happily ever after. But Angele is dumbfounded. She's put off balance. And in effect, this is where the love story begin, and where the film starts to pay off.

Although we learn later that her suitor, Antoine, has a nice body, he does not present to her the dark, ruthless, knowing, three-hour bang that she's used to. This makes it easier to blow him off, to comprehend him as a younger man with "an obsession" -- her words -- rather than an answer to her unasked question.

That's something else I liked about the film. Besides depicting the hard life of people deciding whether to take yet another risk on love in middle age, the film both by words and silences points up how many questions are not asked. People have their life-coping strategies, and they are so full of flaws. The writers and director, keep you ahead of the game, so you usually see what questions should be on the table.

Arriving at the set-up point of this film, we see that Angele's question should be, "just how much longer can I nourish myself with one-night stands before I get in trouble, or my partner pool deteriorates, or I have to start giving little gifts, or the inhumanity of it all makes me drink too much, etc."

But soon after, other questions percolate to the top. "Have I already gone past the point of no return? Can I love again? Can I respond to an impetuous man, like I could as a child? Like my girlish peer beauticians still can?

Or is that even a fair demand to put on myself? Shouldn't HE find a way to reach ME, that is unique to me, Angele, as who and where I am in my life? Shouldn't HE make more of an effort than just to apply his cardboard templates from HIS last romance to me?

Selectively, the film acts out these questions with efficient little skits and interchanges. The positive and cumulative results of these bits and pieces signaled to me that this film was driving towards a good outcome, as opposed to a romantic tragedy of roads not taken or plans not met.

'You should f*ck more and plan less," says one of Angele's more disagreeable men. Will that be her fate, that she can no longer command the resources and lucky breaks to climb out of the pit she has dug for herself?

I doubt when you are 20 years old you can every imagine how life's options can become so narrow by the time 20 more years go by.

Therefore I am prepared to believe that the "hard edge" will seem unreasonable to younger viewers, but perhaps more responsible to other, older viewers

Although this was not their primary purpose, the dating by the manageress Madam Nadine, and the awkward flirtation between the Aviator and Marie could be used to show that dating gets even harder as further years pass bye.

To wrap this up, I found the pushing and shoving of uncertain love, the tenuousness, the false starts, the failure, and restarts, in this one French film, to be more convincing than all the love treatments in Vanilla Sky; Monster's Ball; Crush (2001); Shallow Hall; Proof of Life, combined.

I rating this an EIGHT ("8") reminding me that French films still have a lot to teach me (at least) about love, after all these years.

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8 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
When a Middle Age Woman Finds Love Again, 9 October 2004

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In Paris, Angèle (Nathalie Baye) is a beautician working in the beauty parlor 'Venus Beauty Institute', owned by Natalie (Bulle Ogier). Her colleagues are Samantha (Mathilde Seigner) and Marie (Audrey Tautou) and they have a good relationship in the salon. Angèle has an emotional problem with men and she does not believe in love anymore. Her affairs happen by chance with strangers and she seems to have the gift of choosing wrong guys for one night stand. Angèle meets Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan), a sculptor who has a crush with her, but the bitter and heartbroken Angèle has problems to believe on his love. I liked this romance about a heartbroken middle age woman finding love again. First, because of the great performance of the beautiful Nathalie Baye, who was fifty-one years old in 1999. The gorgeous Audrey 'Amélie Poulain' Tautou and Mathilde Seigner are collyrium for the eyes of the male viewers, being another attraction. The story has some ups and downs, with some shallow situations, like the exhibitionist client who walks naked in the beauty shop, but the balance is very positive. The story ends like a fairy tale and is enjoyable. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): 'Instituto de Beleza Venus' ('Venus Beauty Institute')

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8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Great, Uplifting Slice-of-Life Film, 16 August 1999

Author: Guy33134 from Coral Gables, Fl

VENUS BEAUTY features France's fabulous Nathalie Baye, entering middle-age, as is her character (Angle) in this dramatic comedy. The Venus Beauty Salon is the location for this interesting personality study, not only of Ms. Bayes' character, but also of the personalities of her clients, admirers and co-workers. The film functions very well as a French modern slice-of-life study, across age, income, gender and social groups. Angle's pain in dealing with her sex and emotional life is very well depicted. Ms. Baye is aided by an excellent supporting cast including Samuel Le Bihan as her love interest. Le Bihan has been named France's "most promising young actor", and shows us why here. The movie really draws us into the lives of those who inhabit or pass through the Venus Beauty Institute, a microcosm of Parisian life in the 90's.

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
French slice of professional life with a disappointing ending, 10 August 2000
Author: Rave-Reviewer from United Kingdom

Angèle works in a Paris beauty salon with the ingénue-like Marie and cynical Samantha. Their boss is the supportive but businesslike Nadine (an extremely funny and perceptive performance by Ogier, one of Buñuel's bourgeois in Le Charme Discret… and the dominatrix of Schroeder's Maîtresse) who has years of experience in broken hearts and knows how to keep a professional distance. The film charts Angèle's own progress from embittered divorcée to feeling human being through her pursuit by the love-smitten sculptor, Antoine.

We first see Angèle chatting up a total stranger in a railway buffet. This is what she does. She picks up men for casual sex because her faith in the possibility of love left her when her marriage failed (actually she shot her husband, though not fatally). It is ironic, therefore, that a strikingly similar crime of passion causes a turnaround, but… enough said for now.

What delights most of all in this film is Nathalie Baye's performance. Having had to make do for much of her career with Adjani-type roles such as those in Le Retour de Martin Guerre or La Balance, she has matured to the point where at last she is being offered more interesting work. She invests Angèle with the vulnerability that we have glimpsed in the past, but which carries before it a prickly resilience necessary for survival.

Another great pleasure is the portrait of the beauty salon milieu, which lays bare -rather than covers up - human foibles with typical Gallic frankness. This is not the ersatz world of Cher in Mermaids, nor does it adopt the feminist critique that beauty products are emblems of women's self-enslavement to men. Instead it allows both humour and melancholy to let individual cases speak for themselves. The salon is a self-contained world, with its naggingly distinctive door jingle, where different solutions to the single woman's predicament are offered by employee and customer alike. Nadine tells Angèle: 'When you're not a girl any more, you'd better decide not to be a girl any more.' Samantha is promiscuous but, unlike Angèle, allows her disappointments to affect her professional life, which brings her into conflict with Nadine. But significantly when she tells Nadine where to go, while we may sympathise more with Samantha, Nadine is not made to look petty by comparison (it is possible to imagine how an American film would handle this scene very differently). Marie has a liaison with an injured pilot (Sixties matinée idol Robert Hossein) many years her senior, something Angèle finds it hard to understand until she is turned on by witnessing their nocturnal tryst. Meanwhile Angèle's provincial aunts (Micheline Presle, the director's mother and star of Boule de Suif and Le Diable au Corps, and Emmanuelle Riva, most famously of Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour - both too briefly glimpsed here) co-exist in a domestic routine which is comparatively idyllic but envy Angèle's independence and ability to live it up in the big city. No one is happy.

Clearly the sculptor, with his undemanding love, is the key for Angèle (and many another single female, no doubt!) but just how the film makes the transition from her morose rebuttals to melting acceptance is one aspect in which you may feel it betrays its Mike Leigh-style realism by opting for an ending which is too whimsical. We hope this does not spoil the many other qualities of Marshall's film.

By the same director: If you enjoy Vénus Beauté you would certainly like Tonie Marshall's earlier feature, Pas très catholique.

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Sex in le city, 31 July 2004

Author: ThurstonHunger from Palo Alto, CA, USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I enjoyed this film in ways that made me indirectly think of HBO's "Sex in the City." Not just for the frank discussions, nor for the fact that I preferred the women just talking amongst themselves (coworkers together, and also coworkers with clients) rather than interacting with the men in their lives...

"Sex in the City" flipped more than a few stereotypes, and in "Venus" we find the lead character a woman who has grown weary and too jejune for "je taime". She's not so much in a state of despair as one of dispassion. We see men in films like this...and watch as somehow they are wooed back to vivaciousness, but not often do we see similar women.

I mean, I don't *really* think Stella ever lost her groove, it was more like she knew it was under the blankets on the floor. But Nathalie Baye's fallen Angele is past searching for Mister Right, she's hooking up with a series of Monsieur Wrong Nows.

Light spoilers follow...I'd recommend seeing this film, and I would echo what another reviewer stated, this probably will be appreciated by a slightly older audience. Or more honestly, by jaded types of any age!

For other reviewers here and elsewhere who seem to take a tack of, "Why, I'd never..." Um, even if you swear on a stack of Emily Post's books, still I think if your husband cheated on you and you accidentally shot him in the face, who knows...you might. And more to the point, maybe you should... Mishima liked his women to have a flaw, although he was more partial to a physical one to set off the pure beauty...the same axiom can be applied to personality traits. So lighten up and embrace your dark side. Just don't shoot anybody...

Anyways back to this film, there are also nice touches of humor throughout. A lot actually. And poignant scenes too, such as when Angele talks to a girlfriend not from the salon. I really liked the open dialog between those two, their blunt assessments of each other. The old dramatic element of visiting one's nemesis under disguise or false pretenses worked as it almost always does; here we see it when Helene comes to the salon.

As for the salon itself, well people have talked about its pulsating pinkness. There may be no glass ceiling, but there are certainly glass walls housing them. It makes for a nice dichotomy between women on display, and the actual women inside. Only Audrey Tautou remains under glass even when she's taken out of the shop...in a very steamy, or actually smoky, scene. That scene is doubly voyeuristic, and her *small* role here hits about 11 on the naif scale.

Tautou is gorgeous no doubt, but for those of you who spend all your time slow-motioning her strip-tease, you are skipping over the real beauty of Venus, Baye's performance here is a gem...with some defining blemishes. You could draw parallels from her Angele to Kim Catrall's Samantha, I honestly preferred the former. I never thought of the "Sex in the City" fantastic four as remotely real, I did not need to do so to enjoy them. I feel similarly about the Women from Venus. And I only had a one-nighter with them, whereas I saw Carrie and company off and on for years.

7/10

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Women with lots of issues about men, they are all a mess., 28 July 2003
Author: Frogwoman01 from Somerville, MA

Netflix described this movie as follows: "With "Venus Beauty Institute," French writer and director Tonie Marshall takes us into this world of beauty and self image and into the lives of four strong, smart woman who make their living practicing beauty at a Parisian spa."

I was waiting throughout the entire movie for a glimpse of a strong woman...every woman in the entire movie seemed to me to be needy, insecure, wounded, angry, naive, or self destructive. The implausible plot of the very appealing Antoine, falling head over heels for Angele, I just didn't buy it. Not to mention, why did they have to make him already engaged to someone else? So throughout the whole thing, I'm feeling pissed off that he is betraying his fiance, while wooing this already completely screwed up woman, who has no faith in men already, but this guy is supposed to restore her faith in men, only he is destroying the life of another woman in order to restore the faith of this one????? The whole premise really upset me.

I just wish the movie had been described differently. As women with low self esteem and issues with men, dealing with their issues in their own uniquely unhealthy fashions.

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