Vénus beauté (institut) (1999) Reviews

• Very interesting

  BermudezLievano2000-08-24

  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.

• Woman losing her youth finds love.

  senortuffy2003-10-26

  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.

• Very pink

  DeeNine-22004-08-01

  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!)

• Good Bittersweet Movie

  sharkfinsoup2000-12-04

  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.

• Lots of girl talk: love with a hard edge; like it is. ** SPOILERS **

  TimeForLime2003-01-25

  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.