There is a sophistication about affairs of the heart, about the wisdom and the risks of romantic involvement that is more than quintessentially French. It's irresistible as well.

Love, however implausible, is simply beautiful in Venus.

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

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

Baye gives a stunning performance in the central role, backed by a first-rate supporting cast.

It's all glossy urban fairy-tale stuff, laid on with style to spare, given added resonance by a mini-pantheon of French movie goddesses.

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

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.

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.

Director Tonie Marshall has taken a very simple story and laced it with potent details that make the film a rich map of her lead character's inner life.

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.

It's hard not to feel empowered by Nathalie Baye.