VÉNUS BEAUTÉ (INSTITUT) (1999) ***
Reviewed 3/21/99
40-something Angèle (Nathalie Baye) has fared so poorly with men that she can only bear
one-night stands. So when Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan), who has spied her at a café,
approaches her out of the blue to tell her he's madly in love with her, she can only
wince. Of course, Antoine is not going to give up very easily. The backdrop of all this is
Angèle's workplace, the beauty salon of the title. Nadine (Bulle Ogier) runs it, keeping
a mild distance from her workers, Angèle, Samantha (Mathilde Seigner), and Marie (Audrey
Tautou). Samantha dates a dozen different men but remains unhappy while 20-year old Marie
is pursued by a much older man who lavishes her with his deceased wife's jewelry. The
salon also has its share of eccentric customers, one woman who forsakes all clothing the
moment she steps into the store and another who comes bizarrely attired before heading off
to her latest costume party.
This isn't the usual couple-destined-for-each-other story. Unlike, say, the detestable Sleepless
in Seattle, Vénus scrutinizes the difficulty of successfully realizing a
romance. In Sleepless in Seattle, Nora Ephron callously tosses off the significant
others of the two destined lovers. These significant others are also endowed with
unflattering characteristics, meaning they deserve to get dumped. But in Vénus,
Antoine has a beautiful fiancé whose pain we experience all too viscerally as he drifts
from her. Unfortunately, Tonie Marshall's direction in Vénus is fairly bland, but
like many a Robert Benton film, Marshall transcends her film's banal style with
illuminating content. Vénus is also helped tremendously by an exceptional
performance from veteran actress Baye.
Copyright © 1999 George Wu