'Venus Beauty Institute': Vanity Is Hardly Skin-Deep


Angèle (Nathalie Baye) is a woman of around 40 — maybe a little older, but younger looking, as she coyly tells a date — who works at the Paris skin-care and manicure salon for which "Venus Beauty Institute" is named. Because of a bad experience, which resulted in the scarring of a former boyfriend's face, Angèle has sworn off love, instead pursuing a series of one-night stands with an unsettling mixture of callousness and neediness.

One fine day, as they say in French, a scruffy sculptor named Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan) falls madly in love with Angèle and starts stalking her, lurking outside the salon and observing her every move from afar.

If nothing else "Venus Beauty Institute," a huge hit in France and the winner of a handful of Césars (including awards for best picture, best director and best screenplay), is a lesson in cultural differences. In the United States, Angèle would probably file for a restraining order against Antoine. In France — or in a French movie at any rate — she starts dating him and slowly comes to realize that his wild devotion represents her last shot at true love.

In form, then, this movie, written and directed by Tonie Marshall, is a romantic comedy in which the central couple must navigate the logistical and emotional obstacles that stand between them and ultimate happiness. But the mood is curiously somber, at times almost harsh, and an aftertaste of bleak resignation lingers after the sweet perfume of romanticism has evaporated.

At the heart of this paradox is the institute itself, a place done up in soft pink where customers are greeted with a tinkling chime. The proprietor is Nadine, an incarnation of middle- aged French feminine elegance, played — it's not much of a stretch — by the divine Bulle Ogier. In addition to Angèle, the staff includes two younger women, the moody Samantha (Mathilde Seigner) and the dark-eyed, faux-naïve Marie (Audrey Tautou); their romantic doings, in particular Marie's courting by a suave, older gentleman client (Robert Hossein), provide some humorous relief.

The film's main source of comedy comes from the women who parade through the salon in quest of the secrets of youth and beauty. A certain Madame Buisse (Claire Nebout) blows in without an appointment — or anything on under her trench coat — and monopolizes the tanning booth. Mostly, though, Ms. Marshall observes the institute's customers — who are anxious about wrinkles and liver spots, desperate to hold on to the attention of the men in their lives — with a satirical detachment that is almost cruel.

She clearly has a point to make about the tyranny of good looks and the lengths and expense to which women will go to hold on to them, but it often seems as though she's making fun of the women — and men — who fall short of the ideal. Angèle's former boyfriend, Jacques (Jacques Bonnaffé), has a few small scars on one side of his face, yet other characters treat him as if he were the Elephant Man, and it is assumed that his mild disfigurement has damned him to a life of sorrow and solitude. Late in the movie, Angèle goes to visit her spinster aunts in Poitiers, and the fussiness and vanity with which they cover up their essential loneliness is meant as a pointed lesson to their niece.

Ms. Baye is a sensitive actress, and it is impossible not to be drawn to any character she plays. But like the arch, trivial "Affair of Love," "Venus Beauty Institute" takes unfair advantage of her gift for generating sympathy. Angèle's relationship with Antoine never seems especially believable; it's stipulated by the script, rather than embodied by the actors. And her psychological anguish seems inexplicable. When matters are finally resolved between them, there is a curious and, for a romantic comedy, fatal absence of tenderness.

The film has occasional moments of heat, but not much warmth. And while it is pretty enough to look at, real beauty eludes it.