16-year-old Isabelle loses her virginity and then turns 17, all during a beach vacation, and she doesn't seem to be all that impressed with either occurrence. Jump ahead a few months, and Isabelle is back home, back at school, and using her free time to earn a few extra bucks as an expensive call-girl. How and why did this upper-middle-class girl get into prostitution? We never really learn that. Isabelle is a cipher to her family, her friends, and to us.
22-year-old French model Marine Vacth is extremely easy on the eyes, and she looks great naked. We get quite a few opportunities to appreciate that, but “Young & Beautiful” is not as erotic as it should be, when you consider what director Francois Ozon has to work with. Partly, it's the ick factor created by Vacth's character being underage, having sex with all these older men. The main problem, though, is Isabelle's flat affect. I think she only smiles twice in the whole film. Absent any poverty, we assume that Isabelle prostitutes herself because she enjoys it on some level, but we never get a sense of what is going on behind that beautiful face.
I don't think this is bad acting on Vacth's part. I think Ozon intends us to see Isabelle from the outside, as her friends and family do, and to be mystified by her actions. Indeed, the film opens with us viewing Isabelle through a pair of binoculars, as she sunbathes on the beach. For the next hour and a half, we see Isabelle as others see her, as an object of desire or frustration, but not as a fully-realized person. The result is an incomplete narrative, more of a sketch than a completed work.
3 stars out of 5
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