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9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The secret life of beauticians, 16 Jan 2004
I decided to watch VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE for the sole reason of seeing Audrey Tautou before her appearance in the smash hit AMELIE. Though Audrey is as enchanting as I've ever seen her, perhaps I was too hasty.The focal point of the film is a French beauty shop, which offers mud packs, massages, a tanning booth, depilatory treatments, and the usual array of cosmetics. The heroine is Angele (Nathalie Baye), whose love life, or lack of one, is pretty much the plot. As the movie opens, Angele, no longer in youth's bloom and on the wrong side of thirty, is professing a budding affection to a younger man, who, the cad, callously dumps her after a weekend stand. As an emotional defense, Angele bitterly retreats behind the walls of Woman Scorned. Soon faced with a complete stranger, Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan), who ardently professes his undying love, Angele is determined to keep him at arm's length. In the meantime, Angele's sweetly innocent co-worker, Marie (Tautou), is slowly being seduced by a much older man who regularly visits the shop for facials. Then there's the third beautician, Samantha (Mathilde Seigner), who's only waiting to give the shop's owner, Madame Nadine (Bulle Ogier), the proverbial finger before returning to a real job - nursing. If the strength of VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE lies in its depiction of the on-the-job interaction between the shop's employees, then the film is perhaps too much of a chick flick for me, though my wife wasn't terribly impressed with it either. Watching Angele's angst do battle with hormones wasn't riveting cinema. Audrey Tautou is perhaps even more enthralling than that other love of my life, Audrey Hepburn. As I've stated before, Tautou's liquid brown eyes could melt linoleum. She doesn't disappoint in this film, though her role is disappointingly small. And, male pig that I am, I did pay close attention when one of the shop's statuesquely beautiful customers (Claire Nebout), an exhibitionist, twice strutted all her stuff full frontal. Beyond these diversions, however, VENUS BEAUTY INSTITUTE was a yawner. And the little jingle that played every time the beauty shop's front door opened drove me nuts.
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