Young & Beautiful

To say that director Francois Ozon's art-house film is about a 17-year-old girl's “sexual awakening” would be like saying that Death Wish is merely a “social problem” film. The lithe, attractive, underage French fille at the center—Isabella—is played with precocious poise and almost robotic emotional detachment by Marine Vacth. Isabella leads a comfortable life with a well-to-do mother and loving stepfather. But after she loses her virginity to her German boyfriend, something inside her snaps: not just driven to experiment with serial sexual partners, Isabella finds it necessary to sell her body as a prostitute in Paris, servicing mostly (much) older men for hundreds of euros per session. Isabella maintains a cold emotional distance during her sexual encounters until one of her elderly clients drops dead during a particularly heated session. Suddenly, the authorities are involved and so are her parents, spurring investigation into just what sort of psychological hang-ups could be behind Isabella's compulsion. Some will find in Young & Beautiful a courageous postmodernist ambiguity, while others may see a cowardly reluctance to deal with a nasty psychosexual dilemma stemming from the ennui of contemporary youth culture. Regardless, this thought-provoking film from one of cinema's most daring directors is recommended. (M. Sandlin)