Metacritic reviews

At its best when it remains with the women, and Marshall draws marvelous performances from all.

A pink-collar "Sex and the City" made urgent by the performance of Nathalie Baye.

At its core is a feminine realm (the beauty parlor) through which modern issues of alienation and casual-sex-as-a-drug are coupled with timeless questions about the natures of love and desire.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

Lets you indulge your taste for soapy heartache without leaving you feeling that you have to wash the bubbles out of your mouth.

Thanks to some brilliant casting, Venus Beauty Institute provokes ideas about women, movies, sexuality, and age that extend beyond its frothy fiction.

Clever and smooth, yet, like Angèle herself (or Nathalie Baye), the film is almost too placid for its own good.

Slight but entertaining and occasionally touching.

Marshall does such a good job re-creating the otherworldly energy of a temple of youth that the rest of the picture feels strained and sometimes trite. Nevertheless, parts can be absorbing, reflective and touching.

Warmed my heart about as much as the cold cream Angèle slathers all over her wrinkling clients.