Venus Beauty Institute
by Tonie Marshall
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bulle Ogier, Jacques Bonnaffé, Mathilde Seigner, Nathalie Baye, Samuel Le BihanDirector: Tonie Marshall
Cinematographer: Gérard de Battista
Writer: Tonie Marshall
Producer: Emmanuelle Pinet
Producer: Gilles Sandoz
Producer: Isabelle Pailley
Writer: Jacques Audiard
Writer: Marion Vernoux
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-06-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Venus Beauty Institute
Movie Review: Good Light-Hearted Movie to Watch
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw this movie on cable but never had the chance to see it from the beginning to see what it was about. And it never came back on cable again so I could get the chance to see it. Coming back to school I looked forward to spending a Friday night watching rented movies after a week of school and work.
"Venus Beauty Institute" is a great movie. Ms. Marshall does a great job at examining the lives of three women who toil in a beauty parlor. Angele is cynical about love after she has experienced a lousy relationship with a guy who didn't even acknowledge her. She has been hurt by love and she becomes the aggressor. But being the aggressor doesn't exactly make her a powerful person. She has doubts as to what could have happened if she were patient. Marianne, the optimist, finds love with a widower and former pilot. Angele looks out for her because she fears that she will be hurt by this man. And Samantha is just outrageous. She flirts around but is very selective. She is unhappy with being at the institute.
Antoine observes Angele and finds himself drawn to her. Why is he drawn to her? That is what she can't understand. Love has never been fair to Angele. Her father killed her mother thinking that she had a lover behind his back. When he found there wasn't one, he turned the gun on himself. She grew up with her spinster aunts in Poitiers. Although they have their cynicisms about men, they are still optimistic about men. Angele is fearful of love and being loved.
Antoine, a young man finds this woman attractive and full of life despite her misery. He looks from a distance at her in the salon she works at. He tells her that he loves her and knows how much in love with her he is. He brings out her inner beauty and allows for her to feel joyful.
I loved the scene with Marianne and her beau making love. It was a movie in itself because Angele and Antoine were enthralled to explore their passion for each other rather than break up the affair with them. This movie does have some quirkiness to it. Madame Buisse appears naked to have her daily tanning, a married woman who comes into the salon because her husband wants her to look a certain way for him, and Sam's replacement who tries to turn the salon into a department store.
This is a movie that women can enjoy in a group or by themselves. I would definitely watch this movie the second time around. This movie is a lesson in love--it can hurt as well as heal.
Summary of Venus Beauty Institute
The carefully unattached existence of working girl Nathalie Baye is suddenly upended when lovesick hunk Samuel Le Bihan introduces himself: "My name is Antoine and I love you." Set in a cute glass storefront with a neon pink and blue façade that could have sprung from a Jacques Demy musical, this bittersweet romantic drama was written for the arresting Baye, who plays a middle-aged "girl" in a uniquely Parisian beauty shop that specializes in facials, body treatments, massages, and emotional confession. Her coworkers, young, sweetly guileless brunette cutie Audrey Tautou and gloomy twentysomething Mathilde Seigner, are like glimpses into her past lives, one full of hope and giddy optimism, the other turned resentful from disappointment. She clings to the girly camaraderie and workaday autopilot of her job while her "patronne" (the incomparable Bulle Ogier) nudges her toward responsibility.Writer-director Tonie Marshall has a marvelous feeling for the women who work and visit the place, though her soulful bohemian artist Le Bihan is defined by little more than good looks, shaggy charm, and a kind of reckless attraction. The film is at its best with the women: the easy by-play and guarded emotions of the shopgirls, the often uncontrolled outbursts of the offbeat and oddball clients, and especially the haunted and lonely performance from Baye, who warily creeps out of her shell for another chance at intimacy. --Sean Axmaker
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