Venus Beauty
France 1998
Reviewed by Ginette Vincendeau
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Angèle works in the Venus beauty salon run by Nadine, with two younger colleagues, naive Marie and cynical Samantha. Angèle is cool and professional during the day, but at night she picks up men in cafés and railway stations. Traumatised by the failure of her marriage, which ended by her shooting her husband Jacques, she believes love is an illusion and seeks only sex. But she is moved and disturbed by the unexpected relationship which unfolds between Marie and a much older customer, M. Lachenay, a pilot. Also, a young man named Antoine insistently pursues her, claiming he has fallen in love with her at first sight. Antoine's jealous girlfriend tries to shoot him and Angèle, but he deflects the shot and the film ends with Angèle and Antoine dancing in the salon.
Review
With its salon's pastel blue and pink colour scheme, separated from the dreary real world by a music jingle that plays each time the door opens, Venus Beauty takes us into a feminine universe of massage, gossip and cosmetics. We are, however, far from the girlie fun of Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan or Chantal Akerman's musical Golden Eighties, also set in a hairdressing salon. Venus' world of pampering is designed to highlight the characters' acute loneliness, melancholy and stress. A gallery of anxious female customers goes by, some funny, some tragic: a UV-tan freak, a narcissistic woman trying to erase the liver stains on her hands, a woman in increasingly outlandish costumes, another with disastrous make-up. The male characters hardly fare better: both protagonist Angèle's ex-husband and Marie's suitor Lachenay are disfigured, literalising the film's metaphor that everyone here is somehow scarred.
"Here, we only sell appearances," says Angèle. Yet Venus Beauty shows the recourse to cosmetics as neither demeaning as a first-wave feminist analysis would have had it, nor empowering as post-feminists would argue. As the boss Nadine, Bulle Ogier gives a superbly funny performance that captures the ambivalent tone of the film, her po-faced recitation of the virtues of this or that moisturising cream a masquerade. But when Samantha verbally attacks her, Nadine is not ridiculed - both women are given equal weight. Like many French women directors, Tonie Marshall makes films with clear lines of feminine interest, but without an obvious feminist angle - Angèle is certainly no positive role model. Humorous like Marshall's earlier (and funnier) Pas très catholique, Venus Beauty sharply observes how women are constantly subjected to the male gaze. Angèle's looks are repeatedly commented upon by men ("too thin", "lanky hair"). Her friend Marianne is devastated to find a book in which her partner has graded (out of 20) every woman he has had sex with. Marie Rivière's poor customer complains her rich lover buys her beauty treatments instead of shoes.
Upending the usual gender stereotypes, Angèle is cool and professional while Antoine cannot control himself either emotionally or physically when Angèle gives him a massage. Sexually active Angèle isn't seeking romantic attachment, but the film constantly undermines her. The first scene shows her humiliation by a two-bit macho type she's picked up, and it is precisely her vulnerability which attracts Antoine. So Venus Beauty constructs the unusual figure of a female sexual predator, only to characterise her as terminally melancholy. No joyful Parisian encounters around a café-crème here. As Marianne says, "You're the saddest girl I've ever met." Angèle talks to herself aloud on gloomy streets in a permanent winter. She has no ambition, isn't interested in politics or other people, and unrealistically tries to hang on to her youth by bizarrely washing her face in cold water on the landing. She ignores the advice of the more pragmatic Nadine, who tells her, "When you're not a girl any more, you'd better decide not to be a girl any more." A frustratingly short moment of warmth is provided by Angèle's visit to her aged aunts, played with great gusto and humour by former stars Emmanuele Riva and Micheline Presle (Marshall's mother), but the scene also pinpoints the difference between their fantasy of single life and Angèle's reality.
Throughout the 70s and 80s Nathalie Baye, with her graceful gestures and shy smile, developed the persona of the vulnerable yet determined woman, epitomised by her part in Bertrand Tavernier's Une semaine de vacances. In the 90s, her independent yet vulnerable image was used to great effect by such women directors as Diane Kurys in La Baule-les Pins and Nicole Garcia in Un week-end sur deux. Venus Beauty, like the Jeanne Labrune film Si je t'aime, prends garde à toi which also casts Baye as a sad sexual predator, seems to fix her further in a morose, masochistic mode.
Angèle's independence is made hollow since she gives in to Antoine at the end of his seduction campaign which many would regard as sexual harassment. Similarly, the scene in the pilot's house where he and Marie engage in an awkward erotic ritual is the only thing which turns Angèle on sexually. She may claim "reciprocated love does not exist" but contradictorily wishes for it. Personally I had hopes for the more robust Samantha until her promiscuity led her to a suicide attempt. Venus Beauty offers women phoney comfort (Nadine), fetishistic eroticism (Marie) and unfulfilling promiscuity (Angèle and Samantha). In this light, the provincial comfort of the aunts is positively attractive. As her direction of Ogier and Seigner shows, Marshall has a real talent for comedy. Let us hope she can leave the gloom of Venus Beauty and return to the zestful form evinced in Pas très catholique.
Credits
- Producer
- Gilles Sandoz
- Screenplay/Dialogue
- Tonie Marshall
- Director of Photography
- Gérard de Battista
- Editor
- Jacques Comets
- Art Director
- Michel Vandestien
- Music
- Khalil Chahine
- ©Agat Films & Cie/Arte Cinéma/Tabo Tabo
- Production Companies
- Agat Films & Cie/Gilles Sandoz present in co-production with Arte France Cinéma/Tabo Tabo Films with the participation of Canal+ & Sofica Sofinergie 4/Centre National de la Cinématographie
- Production Controller
- Marc Bordure
- Production Co-ordinator
- Nadine Perron
- Production Manager
- Malek Hamzaoui
- Unit Managers
- Bruno Ghariani
- Alexandra Bourdon
- Eric Vassard
- Omar Yousfi Scott
- Eddie Gaydu
- Unit Director
- Alain Peyrollaz
- Script Supervisor
- Josiane Morand
- Casting
- Bruno Levy
- Screenplay Collaborators
- Marion Vernoux
- Jacques Audiard
- Special Snow Effects
- James Unger
- Costume Designers
- Nathalie Duroscoat
- Claire Gérard-Hirne
- Make-up
- Françoise Andrejka Anastassios
- Special Make-up Effects
- Dominique Colladant
- Hair
- Cedric Chami
- Titles/Opticals
- Mikros Image
- Musicians
- Violoncello:
- Sonia Wieder-Atherton
- Piano:
- Bruno Fontaine
- Guitar:
- Khalil Chahine
- Orchestra Director
- Claire Paris
- Music Arrangers
- Khalil Chahine
- Bruno Fontaine
- Music Recording
- Didier Lozahic
- Philippe Laffont
- Soundtrack
- "Nuit de Noël" by l'abbé Zurfluh, solo baritone: Camille Maurane, organ: Marie-Claire Alain ? and les petits chanteurs de Saint Laurent; "Manha do carnaval" by Antônio Maria, François Llenas, Luis Bonfa; "Le Premier Bonheur du jour" by R.J. Renard, G. Biesel, performed by Françoise Hardy; "Sweet Lessons of Love", "You Are the Woman" by N. Neidhart, J.M. Marrier, performed by D'Unnienville; "Samuel" by Patrick Taïeb, Helen Steve; "Rilax No1", "Rilax No2,", "Rilax No3" by N. Neidhart, S. Storch
- Sound
- Jean-Jacques Ferran
- Sound Re-recording
- Gérard Lamps
- Sound Editor
- Mathilde Muyard
- Sound Effects
- Nicolas Becker
- Sound Effects Recording
- Anne Le Campion
- Post-synchronization
- Chris Max
- Post-synchronization Recording
- Stéphane Thiébaut
- Ludovic Hénault
- Cast
- Nathalie Baye
- Angèle Piana
- Bulle Ogier
- Nadine
- Samuel LeBihan
- Antoine Dumont
- Jacques Bonnaffé
- Jacques
- Mathilde Seigner
- Samantha
- Audrey Tautou
- Marie
- Robert Hossein
- M. Lachenay, the pilot
- Edith Scob
- client with spots on her hands
- Marie Rivière
- client in fur boots
- Hélène Fillières
- Antoine's fiancée
- Brigitte Roüan
- Marianne
- Liliane Rovère
- hair-removal client
- Claire Denis
- asthmatic client
- Claire Nebout
- Madame Buisse
- Elli Medeiros
- Evelyne
- Gilbert Melki
- lover at station
- Philippe Harel
- Patrick Pineau
- men at self-service café
- Chantal Bronner
- Eliane
- Sophie Grimaldi
- Madame Langevin
- Frédéric Andrëi
- last-minute client
- Micheline Presle
- Aunt Maryse
- Emmanuele Riva
- Aunt Lyda
- Catherine Hosmalin
- client with sun tan
- Florence Derive
- Zizou
- Eric Petitjean
- Rinaldo Rocco
- removal men
- Martine Audrain
- Angèle's neighbour
- Laurence Mercier
- Madame Schmidt
- Michel Gauthier
- Medhi de Lu
- waiters
- Joël Brisse
- Joël, friend from Poitiers
- Romain Goupil
- Doctor Fremond
- Carole Deroo
- Madame Pommerand
- Charles-Roger Bour
- Pierre
- Nicolas Bomsel
- passer-by asking for the time
- Michel Vandestien
- warehouse owner
- Olivier Pace
- warehouse worker
- Arnaud Dautzenberg
- cabinetmaker
- Vanda Benes
- waitress
- Alain Peyrollaz
- man on platform
- Cyril Arvenzag
- Cedric Bruzac
- Nadine's sons
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Gala Film Distributors
- 9,604 feet
- 106 minutes 43 seconds
- Dolby/Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Subtitles
- Onscreen subtitle is
- Venus Beauty (Salon)