Venus Beauty Institute [DVD]

Plot and acting are fair. Character depth does not exist. The lives of the primary characters send a pathetic chill. The coloration of the beauty salon is exquisite, but that of the real world is dark and pathetic.If you are here to follow the enchanting Audrey Tautou, you are in the wrong location. Audrey sinks to new depths as she succumbs to a lover 3x her age and accepts his expensive gifts. Angele, played by Nathalie Baye, follows an endless succession of dates and lovers and one can only suspect that the final choice is ill-conceived as well. View this film as you would a comic strip because the depth of character is about the same.

I bought this film to practice my French. I figured it was fluffy, but would prove more interesting than language lab. I was right. However, it not only beats language lab, it is film of great depth--and pleasing to the eye. Nathalie Baye, who plays the lead character Angele in the VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE, played the wife to Gerhard Depardieu's husband in THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE. She is not a terribly pretty woman, but like most French women she has a "certain something, I know not what" and is a fine actress. The film is currently being marketed as an early Audrey Tautou film (she plays Marie, the 20-year old beautician who becomes involved with an older man), but Tautou has ninth billing and much less screen time than Baye.Angele is very unhappy. She apparently has never been able to make a committment to a man. One man with whom she apparently had an earlier serious relationship appears throughout the film (she runs back to him whenever she is wounded), and it seems she may have once loved him, but somehow she shot him in the face.Angele uses casual sex to deal with her unhappiness. Her tactics frequently led to bad experiences. One day as she is being dumped by her latest jerk, a young man who looks suspiciously like a young relative of Depardieu approaches her and tells her he has fallen in love with her. The rest of the film tells their story--including an ex-fiancee with a gun.This is a beautiful film. The story is beautiful. The film contains beautiful shot after shot. I am attracted to color and the celadon greens, mango pinks, celestial blues, and others are fabulous colors are to die for (think Jamaica). The interior shots of the beauty institute, the apartments, the homes are filled with color and ambient lighting. Poitiers Cathedral at Christmas and the Christmas lights on the street are lovely.I've spent a lot of time in salons being waxed, and plucked, and poked, and baked under a hair drier, and I have never seen the salon so well depicted. The characters who receive Angele's ministrations are treated with loving kindness and lots of hot wax and scented oil. This film is so REAL and if it says anything it says that LOVE is where you find it, even if it involves torture.

Not a film noir, thanks to its liveliness and a bitter-sweet humor, it is nonetheless a "naturalist" story of an antihero and her fellow, upwardly-immobile workers - all employed at "SMIC", or minimum wage. As a past French business owner, I sympathized most with the owner of the beauty parlor - especially when she vainly encourages our anti-hero to start her own business. Incredible, the number of construction workers I screened who couldn't divide, or whose French orthography was atrocious. But since Mitterand's ascension to the presidency back in 1981, the continued decline in national competitivity and rise in unemployment make this film a voice of its time - I only regret it shows no light at the end of the tunnel.Still the actors' and actresses' personalities and wit and charisma so illuminate the otherwise "morne" story line, that I found it eminently viewable and would look for more work from this group. And despite what's been said by some other reviewers, I believe this film could have been successfully conceived in Buenos Aires, New York, Prague, or Shanghai... there is a delicate universality to it in which we all can find some commonality.By the way, I could draw some parallels between this film and the independent comix series, "Minimum Wage", by Bob Fingerman, or the more hard-core series by Terry LeBan, e.g., "Love's Not a Three-Dollar Fare"

The French do this so well. Too bad this film isn’t better known in the US

It's worth buying this DVD for the quality of the film, in which the somewhat surreal setting (a brightly lit and garishly pink beauty salon, with its equally surreal clientele) is in stark contrast to the darker lifestyles of the main characters as they seek to come to terms with the besetting questions of sex and relationships. However, the purpose of this review is to draw attention to the poor quality of the film transfer to DVD. Fox Lorber don't seem to have worked out how to produce a sharp clear DVD image, and it's particularly unfortunate in this case as there is so much pink in the overall colour of the film. Even the subtitles are fuzzy. There are many good French films in the Fox Lorber catalogue that aren't easily available elsewhere - it's a great shame that the quality of the picture is so poor.

Pretty good movie.

Excellent product and service. A really cool heart felt love story. Audrey tatou is gorgeous and brilliant. With good plot humor and depth of characters this is a cool film

If you like French romance, this is a winner!

This is one of those films that the French do better than the rest of us. It is very hard to imagine anybody even trying to make a film about daily life in a German, British or Scandinavian beauty salon, but the voyeur (for that is what viewers are, on the outside looking in, often quite literally through the shop-front window or even from across the street) soon cannot get enough of the trivial exchanges between the motley staff and their customers. I saw it first decades ago and found that many of the scenes and exchanges had stayed absolutely fresh in my memory and were exquisitely enjoyable to revisit. You cannot say that about many other films. Every one of the cast does a terrific job of creating their character and as the film ends you are just sorry you will not see them again next day. Vive la France!

Not sure if I am showing my age or lack of Frenchness (although my teenage children were similarly taken by surprise) but the 'romances' portrayed are distinctively dodgy if not down right creepy, especially the main one involving Nathalie Baye. The comedy side is good though and so is the general salon aesthetic but as soon as you step out of Vénus eyebrows start rising in a non botoxed way.

The American reviewer sets the story of the film splendidly in every way but, I loved it!! It was one of those french films that pop up every so often and want a bit more of. I have been a fan of Robert Hossein since Angelique and his presence now and again added interest for me, as I have read that he was 72ish when this film was made and I would have succumbed! The acting was superb from all involved and so true in so many ways. It took me a while to buy this film because of the first review but I forgive it any sins that it may have and will enjoy it often!!

I had been looking for this movie for a long timei gotta admit i was expecting a bit more of it, butits still a movie with the complexety of characters thatare around the frech cinema, the dvd was in excellet conditionand arrived way sooner that the delivery date.

J AI ADORE CAR J AI ECRIT UN MEMOIRE SUR L ACCUEIL EN ENTREPRISE. OR, IL EST INDISPENSABLE D EN APPRECIER LES QUALITES SURTOUT FACE AU CLIENT QUE L ON RECOIT. EN COSMETIQUE, IL EST IMPERATIF D ETRE SOURIANT ET POLI VIS A VIS DU CLIENT. IL FAUT SAVOIR AUSSI QUE JE POSSEDE LA SERIE VENUS ET APPOLON EN 5 DVD QUI EST UNE REPRISE DU FILM VENUS BEAUTE. SUPERBE A REGARDER.