Thanks to some brilliant casting, Venus Beauty Institute provokes ideas about women, movies, sexuality, and age that extend beyond its frothy fiction.
Venus Beauty Institute(Vénus beauté (institut))
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 1999
Rated R · 1h 45m
Director Tonie Marshall
Starring Nathalie Baye, Bulle Ogier, Audrey Tautou, Mathilde Seigner
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
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Madam Nadine manages with pride the "Vénus Beauté" Salon which offers relaxation, massage and make-up services. The owner and her three beauticians: Samantha, Marianne and Angèle are pros. Contrary to her friend Marianne, who still dreams of the big day, Angèle no longer believes in love. Marie, the youngest of the three employees, discovers love in the hands of a sixty year-old former pilot.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
A pink-collar "Sex and the City" made urgent by the performance of Nathalie Baye.
Lets you indulge your taste for soapy heartache without leaving you feeling that you have to wash the bubbles out of your mouth.
At its core is a feminine realm (the beauty parlor) through which modern issues of alienation and casual-sex-as-a-drug are coupled with timeless questions about the natures of love and desire.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
Slight but entertaining and occasionally touching.
Portland Oregonian by Kim Morgan
Marshall does such a good job re-creating the otherworldly energy of a temple of youth that the rest of the picture feels strained and sometimes trite. Nevertheless, parts can be absorbing, reflective and touching.
Austin Chronicle by Kimberley Jones
Warmed my heart about as much as the cold cream Angèle slathers all over her wrinkling clients.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Clever and smooth, yet, like Angèle herself (or Nathalie Baye), the film is almost too placid for its own good.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
At its best when it remains with the women, and Marshall draws marvelous performances from all.
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