Venus Beauty Institute (1999) User Reviews (22)

Woman losing her youth finds love.

[senortuffy · 7/10 · 26 October 2003]

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.

When a Middle Age Woman Finds Love Again

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 9 October 2004]

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')

Can those who prepare others for love find it themselves?

[rlcsljo · 5/10 · 10 September 2002]

A parade of interesting characters walk through this beauty parlor usually convinced that all that matters is the external self. While the workers service their customer's outside's, the workers go about dealing with their inner feelings and emotions.

Which is more important? When the camera is in the "institute", things are pink and alive, but superficial. When the camera is outside, thing get much more dreary, but more emotionally satisfying.

May be both things count equally.

Women with lots of issues about men, they are all a mess.

[Frogwoman01 · 28 July 2003]

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.

Far from perfect but engaging

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 18 February 2009]

Before I review the film, I should point out that Audrey Tautou does NOT star in this film despite DVD covers that show just her on the cover. In the film, she works at the Venus Beauty Salon but the film actually centers on Nathalie Baye and her rather bizarre life. Ms. Tautou is clearly a supporting actress, but following the amazing success of her film "Amélie", unscrupulous people changed the box art to make it look like it was a starring role for her. For her part, however, he is probably at her most radiant and sensual.

As for the film, it's about period of several months in the life of Baye. Baye plays a middle-aged sexually compulsive woman who loves casual sex but is deeply afraid of a deeper commitment. A strangely compulsive younger man suddenly begins stalking her--announcing that he loves her even though they had never formally met! In the midst of this very screwed up relationship, you see the co-workers in their relationships, though these are never explored in the same depth as Baye's.

If you are looking for some depth or meaning in this film, I sure couldn't find any. While some might see Baye as a "work in progress" and by the end of the film she's finally found happiness, this isn't clearly established and based on her life so far, this seemed unlikely. I certainly hope nobody sees this film and thinks Baye is a role model or even particularly likable. However, it is a well done portrait of a very flawed woman and the acting is very good--just not particularly pleasant.

By the way, there is quite a bit of explicit nudity in this film, as one of the customers is an exhibitionist. Adults should consider this before showing the movie to kids.

Mildly entertaining voyeurism and lots of girl talk

[=G= · 6/10 · 3 January 2002]

"Venus Beauty Institute" tells of 40+ Angele (Baye), who prefers one night stands or "flings", as she calls them, to normal heterosexual relationships and love, and her lack of success with men. In addition to never being given a reason to care about Angele one way or the other, the audience will find much of this film dedicated to superfluous girl talk about the this and that of their lives and vocations. Inconclusive and muddled, "VBI" has little to offer save some fine performances which seems wasted on a trite and useless story.

Sex in le city

[ThurstonHunger · 7/10 · 31 July 2004]

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

A cut above Bridget Jones

[paul2001sw-1 · 7/10 · 5 August 2005]

There's something almost cloyingly twee about 'Venus Beauty Institute', a romantic drama constructed around a series of encounters between the staff of a Paris beauty salon and their clients. The problem is not so much with the individual vignette, which are generally well observed and acted, but rather in the underpinning notion that all life can be neatly sampled through such a prism, each set-piece topped and tailed by the ghastly sound generated each time the shops's doors are opened. There's even an early role for Audrey Tautou, which provides one clue as to the tone of the film. However, the movie is definitely a cut above the likes of 'Bridget Jones' Diary', principally because of the fine performance of Nathalie Baye in the central role. She plays a subtly jaundiced forty-something, and imbues the film with a touching realism absent from generic chick-lit adaptations. There's little real plot that can't be foreseen, but thanks to Baye (and the understated direction of Tonie Marshall), this is a more interesting movie than most in its genre.

Very interesting

[BermudezLievano · 9/10 · 24 August 2000]

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.

French delight?

[paul8714 · 7/10 · 3 August 2005]

This was only my third experience of French cinema (obvioulsy like everyone I've seen La Haine and Baise Moi).

It was on late night TV and just flicked as it was starting and found myself into it. It's a story about Angelie, a 30 something who works in a Prais beauty parlour and her lovelife. SHe has an old flame who appears now and again and a younger man who pesters her constantly promising to give up his much younger fiancée for her.

I found it slow at times but funny t others, all be it the comedy is French and so a bit surreal. The characters are poorly defined in some ways, especially the younger parlour worker, maybe the story about her and the older man could be explored further.

Overall, worth watching and has encouraged me to investigate more French films

a waste of time

[konotok · 1/10 · 9 November 2003]

this film (or should i say movie) was one of the most trite unentertaining pieces of garbage i have ever seen. The worst part about it was the script, although the acting was horrible over done as well. Boring cinematography as well. I kept wondering if this was an attempt at american film making by a french director. It had all the makings of a porno without the saxophone dub. I would strongly recommend that you forgo this awful nonsense. perhaps the worst french film ever made (but its hard to say due to Man Bites Dog)

Very pink

[DennisLittrell · 9/10 · 1 August 2004]

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!)

Is this the way of the French Cinema?

[dcarbajales · 5/10 · 30 June 2000]

If this movie has been selected as the best film of the year by French Academy, I don't want to think about the other movies. We are in front of a silly movie, nothing in it must be considered. We can only watch it as amusement such as we hear raining. This is a movie of the pile, we can watch it, but if we don't watch nothing happens.

Good Bittersweet Movie

[sharkfinsoup · 8/10 · 4 December 2000]

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 **

[TimeForLime · 8/10 · 25 January 2003]

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.

Great, Uplifting Slice-of-Life Film

[Guy33134 · 8/10 · 16 August 1999]

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.

French slice of professional life with a disappointing ending

[Rave-Reviewer · 10 August 2000]

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.

beautifully-acted romantic comedy with some drama

[steve.schonberger · 8/10 · 28 May 2000]

Nathalie Baye is on the screen in almost every scene, and it's never too much. She's outstanding. The supporting cast are also very good. The directing is mostly quite good too. But the real treat is in the story.

The main character, Angèle, is a beautician who is afraid to fall in love, because she's been hurt too much in the past. A new man tells her he's in love -- the last thing she wants to hear from a man. She's 40, but the story would have worked for a person of any age. (I saw the movie at a Seattle International Film Festival screening. Director Tonie Marshall told us in the audience that she had Nathalie Baye in mind as the star, and wrote the character to fit her.) But I can't say much more about the main plot without spoilers.

While the story is centered on Angèle, there are several other interesting characters, mainly her co-workers (particularly young, innocent Marie) and some interesting regular clients (particularly the comical Madame Buisse).

While the story is mainly a romantic comedy, there is some drama. The story does a good job of keeping the comedy and serious drama from running into conflict with each other. And unusual for a comedy, the story doesn't stray from plausibility for the sake of humor, but the comedy is still strong.

Sweet Baye and Baye

[writers_reign · 28 May 2004]

Nathalie Baye illuminates any film she cares to grace - as do so many French actresses, Isabelle Carre, Sabine Azema, Carole Bouquet, Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Kiberlain, etc - and this time around for good measure she has great support from the likes of Bulle Ogier, Audrey Tatou (pre- Amelie and relatively unknown) and Mathilde Seignier. In short it's a terrific ensemble piece revolving around a beauty parlour and the Christmas holiday respectively. Even with a gun to my head I couldn't pick out a bad performance and writer-director Toni Marshall is going to have a hard time eclipsing this one. It was more than deserving of the 'Best Film' Cesar it was awarded and in this case we can truly say it was champagne for cesar. 9/10

Satisfaction found

[susannanyc · 9/10 · 23 October 2006]

What a lovely little film for the cynical romantic! I found it more then satisfying after watching it for the first time, and have since purchased it, which attests to its appeal to me. I'm less-then-satisfied with the likes of films such as "Runaway Bride" et al. I love a good movie, a movie that draws you in - and have no interest in "chick flicks", however this one comes very close to filling that void - a thinking woman's "chick flick". Like Paris, it shows it's feminine side heartily, however the male characters have something to show for themselves as well. Very fantastical, yet this film has enough to it to believe that the stories it tells just might unfold 'in real life' as they have in this film.

Excellent...

[galou · 10/10 · 14 April 1999]

Venus Beauté Institute is the best movie I have seen this year. It is funny, serious and you really stick to it. I have seen it at 11pm and I didn't think even a second that I would be better sleeping. The actors play well and it deals with many topics concerning the society : suicide, jealousy, accident, work world....

Love this film

[lucy-66 · 22 July 2003]

But if you want to learn how to give someone a massage, don't

copy Natalie! Most unprofessional. In fact all the girls seem to do

is apply (and try to sell) products (it's a good running gag).

This film is rather like Victoria Wood's British series

Dinnnerladies, with an ensemble cast of wonderful actresses

including cameos from some grande dames of the theatre/cinema. Can we believe Angele's tales of her past,

though? What really happened to her parents? Did she really

shoot Jacques? Is he really disfigured (he doesn't look too bad)?