paul2001sw-1
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.
TimeForLime
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 viewersAlthough 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.
rlcsljo
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.
George Parker
"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.
