Young & Beautiful is François Ozon's ambitious venture into the Fat Girl/Samaritan Girl universe, where adolescent female sexuality is explored through the most controversial yet ultimately maturing manner, and patriarchal slut-shaming is replaced by a strong dose of female self-empowerment.

In Young & Beautiful, a 17-year-old French girl comes of age while providing escort services to men of various ages. Through naturalistic lens, we follow Isabelle's life, as she juggles her messy family relations while keeping her secret money-making profession on the down low. The origin of Isabelle's decision is never explained, which is in perfect accordance with the inexplicable nature of teenage sensuality. With the whole story divided by four seasons, it's obviously metaphorical of the personal sexual awakening of Isabelle,…

Why did Isabelle become a prostitute? The question remains unanswered. It could be just like what his stepfather had speculated; for experimentation, but that's far too simple for my liking. Thinking about it, I find that my train of thought keeps going back to the psychiatrist's question:

"Are you doing this to see how much you're worth?"

Yes, worth. Perhaps that's the reason. Isabelle who seems to be so insecure of herself at the beginning completely transformed after her first sexual encounter. I like to think that experience brought a new issue to light for her -- self worth. Everyone's serious at 17. So she had set out to discover her value, every teenager goes through this phase, only Isabelle's…

Jeune & Jolie (also known as Young & Beautiful) is a cold and curious coming-of-age drama from director, François Ozon. A pretty teenage girl, after losing her virginity to a disappointing summer fling, takes up a job as a call girl yet remains strangely aloof to the encounters and the money she makes. Although it could be superficially described as a teenage Belle De Jour, Ozon’s intentions seem less clear cut.

A blank yet beautiful Marine Vacht stars as the 17-year old protagonist who takes up the oldest profession in the world. Through trial and error she discovers the different wants and needs of her clients but her own needs remain ambiguous to the end. There is a clear detachment in the…

''Once a whore, always a whore.''

Only mere weeks after watching François Ozon's impressive In the House, I stumbled across the latest offering in his consistent and prolific career in Jeune & Jolie (Young & Beautiful). The trajectory of the narrative here was certainly not surprising to me in light of recent reports detailing the increasing trend of female students turning to prostitution to cover their financial needs, but what pleased me most was that Ozon wasn't trying to explore this social issue at all. His main thrust here is a psychological study on a young woman who isn't giving anything away easily.

Filmed over four seasons and beginning with a family beach holiday, we see from the outset that Isabelle (Marine…

Young and beautiful is about a 17 year old girl who decides to become a call girl after losing her virginity. As you can expect this film is quite sexual but it doesn't feel pronographic or unjustified, I thought this was impressive as a lot of other films that have very sexual elements show extremely explicit content as a way of justifying the sexual nature of the film without actually giving the sex a purpose.

There are some pretty good technical elements on display here. The cinematography was good and the score is well composed and fits each sequence well. Although it doesn't sound unique whatsoever and the main theme is overused. I thought all the performances were decent, even…

There was a time when European cinema had a special emotionally naked appeal, preoccupied in the throes of mature adult relationships — and simultaneously had a wisdom to it. I had become increasingly disappointed in the past decade however at the measly and rehashed offerings that have less gall, and cinematic sensibility, than such foreign offerings that were produced in decades past.

Yet one title that unassumingly has grown in my mind is Young & Beautiful, one that threatens to teeter on salaciousness but instead finds a salient humanity. It concerns 17-year old Isabelle (Marine Vacth) — old enough to be beautiful and assimilated with a cosmopolitan world but young enough to be, well, naive — who believes she is immune…

Young & Beautiful (also known as Jeune & Jolie) is the story of a 17-year old girl named Isabelle who after losing her virginity, the experience of which leaves her cold, starts living a double life as a call girl under the alias Lea, which in her opinion is a win-win situation as it allows her to explore her sexuality & she gets paid for it. But when one of her clients dies due to heart attack during an encounter, she leaves & quits prostitution only to be later tracked down by the police who reveals Isabelle's double life to her parents.

I don't really know what to make of this film. The filmmaker's intention is not as clear as it should be nor…

I chose to see Young & Beautiful solely based on who the filmmaker is. François Ozon has established himself as a gifted filmmaker. Two of his films that I particularly enjoyed are In the House and Swimming Pool. I knew nothing about Young & Beautiful going into the theater, and I'm glad that I did because its subject was a surprise.

The film is a character study of a 17-year-old girl who explores her sexuality, told in four segments around the four seasons and introduced with a Françoise Hardy song. The story begins in summer with Isabelle (Marine Vacth) vacationing with her family. She loses her virginity to a handsome German boy on a beach. It is an experience that leaves her…

”Once a whore, always a whore.”

Jeune et Jolie’s main idea is an interesting one and the way Francois Ozon and his talented young and beautiful actress, Marine Vacth, manage the story and the internal conflicts of the main character is quite absorbing in the first half but as the plot goes ahead and more characters enter the story the films loses its initial focus and strength and eventually ends in the most irrelevant and disappointing way possible.

The first half is really engaging as film’s main character Isabelle starts to explore her sexuality, she loses her virginity on a hot summer night and after that starts to work as a call girl, meeting various older men and getting paid…

In a nutshell -- after losing her virginity, Isabelle (who is 17) embarks on a secret life as a sex worker. But there is so much more to this story than its titillating logline.

First off, I loved the subdued nature of the director’s confidence in conveying what needs to be said with glances and facial expressions. We understand exactly what's being "said" in these moments, just like non-verbal communication in daily life.

Second, Marine Vatch is great as Isabelle. I found myself so curious about the complexity of Isabelle. I appreciated her characterization, and how there simply wasn't concrete explanations for every decision she made. I found this refreshing, actually. She didn't need the money she received. And, it…

Young & Beautiful is François Ozon's ambitious venture into the Fat Girl/Samaritan Girl universe, where adolescent female sexuality is explored through the most controversial yet ultimately maturing manner, and patriarchal slut-shaming is replaced by a strong dose of female self-empowerment.

In Young & Beautiful, a 17-year-old French girl comes of age while providing escort services to men of various ages. Through naturalistic lens, we follow Isabelle's life, as she juggles her messy family relations while keeping her secret money-making profession on the down low. The origin of Isabelle's decision is never explained, which is in perfect accordance with the inexplicable nature of teenage sensuality. With the whole story divided by four seasons, it's obviously metaphorical of the personal sexual awakening of Isabelle,…