Jeune & jolie (a.k.a. Young & Beautiful), 2013.
Written and Directed by François Ozon.
Starring Marine Vacth, Géraldine Pailhas, Frédéric Pierrot and Fantin Ravat.
SYNOPSIS:
The portrait of a 17 year-old girl, in 4 seasons and 4 songs.
Jeune & jolie revels in the taboo. In Francois Ozon’s 14th feature, 17-year-old Isabelle (Marine Vacth) begins prostituting herself, in an effort to earn some money and to make her feel both desired and in control. Her clients, apparently all moneyed old businessmen (not hard to see what Ozon is implying there), pay well and for the most part treat her with ‘respect’. This includes one particular john, whose attachment to Isabelle leads to a crisis of conscience.
For a film so adamant on putting sex with a pubescent young woman on display, Jeune & jolie rarely enters the danger zone of gratuitous titillation. The sex is made to be erotic, naked flesh lensed in warm hues, but Ozon’s depiction of Isabelle’s life outside the various jizz-stained hotel rooms shows his real intentions.
At the beginning of the film a wide-eyed virgin, timid around the man she meets on holiday for a quick rendezvous, Isabelle forces herself to gain sexual experience at the expense of a happy personal life. An already precarious relationship with her family becomes evermore strained, as if an adulterous mother, a possibly lecherous stepfather and a ‘curious’ younger brother wasn’t already enough.
As Isabelle, Marine Vacth does a stunning job of subtly shifting from youthful innocent to seen-it-all cynic, outwardly remaining – as the title translates – ‘young and beautiful’, but within adopting a sense of crippled wisdom. The film hints at the reasons why Isabelle takes up sex as a trade, but Ozon makes plenty of suggestions without ever landing on one.
Ultimately you could just put it down to what Ozon sees as the attitude of modern youths; wanting to shed their innocence as quickly as possible and with the increasing means to do so. Indeed, all Isabelle’s clients are dealt with via her mobile phone or the internet, the discerning businessman’s perfect means for obtaining a quick punt. It leads to Isabelle maturing so rapidly that she can no longer relate to those her own age, leaving her isolated.
It’s this that turns Jeune & jolie into a tragedy, as we become witness to a girl too young to understand what she’s losing before the damage becomes irreparable. Beyond the controversy-ripe sex scenes that will garner the most attention, the film is an effective condemnation of the hollow pursuit of money and base pleasures as a way of diminishing much deeper spiritual and emotional pain.
Muting the comedy, Ozon obviously feels he has something important to say here. Even the few jokes have sinister sexual undertones (when Isabelle’s mother asks stepfather Patrick if Isabelle and a schoolmate conquest are ready for breakfast, Patrick puntastically responds that they’re “coming” after he overhears them having sex in Isabelle’s bedroom). The film also feels much more organic than Ozon’s last film, the entertaining meta-trifle In the House. Jeune & jolie operates less on a cerebral level and takes a more quietly emotional approach instead, resonating for much longer as a result.
What could have been mindlessly provocative piffle is actually a sad, alternative coming-of-age tale for the age of austerity. Jeune & jolie is about a world of global connection that in the end offers nothing to the lonely but impersonal encounters on speed-dial. It’s about a young girl so misguided that she thinks nothing of reducing her body to a commodity. The final scene is also one of the most haunting of the year, suggesting so much long beyond the moment that Jeune & jolie becomes a lasting study of a character we feel continues living long after the film closes.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published November 19, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
