I’s been said that Marine Vacht, the arresting beauty who plays Isabelle in François Ozon’s subtly enchanting Jeune & Jolie (Young and Beautiful) surely reminds you of Catherine Deneuve’s Sev-érine in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour, which is true. But she’s also bound to remind you of Sue Lyon as the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita. In any case, think of a lethal combination of the two and you’ll have a pretty good idea of who Isabelle is. But only on the surface.
She’s only 17 and right after she loses her virginity in a not-too-memorable way with a German boy not that much older than her, she develops a quick penchant for high-class prostitution. That is after an older man who spots her after school wants to give her money for having sex, and though she rejects him, she seems to wonder what it would be like. That’s reason enough to become a prostitute by day during weekdays and a school girl by the evening and during weekends.
One by one, mature men become infatuated with her beauty, her apparent innocence, her alluring sexuality. One by one, they make her rich. But on an ill-fated day, something ominous happens when she least expected it: in a matter of seconds, Isabelle is about to face more than a few tribulations, to her family’s distress and her own pain.
Coming from Ozon, don’t expect a film on why and how a young girl becomes a prostitute, be it from a psychological, an existential, an emotional, or a social outlook. Don’t expect an explanation for her behaviour, as it seems even she doesn’t have one. Least of all, don’t expect a critique of anything at all. If there’s anything that may point out that something is not in the best shape that would be the loneliness, the lack of affection and iciness of Isabelle’s customers. But that’s their problem, and it doesn’t include all of them.
Instead, what you have here is an observation of the afternoons of a nymphet driven by the law of desire. A diaphanous portrayal where the reasons for said behaviour remain elusive throughout, and yet there’s a contagious allure of unusual intensity. Not that it’s expressed out in the open with big gestures, but delicately conveyed — and sometimes not so delicately — with smooth and soft strokes. And if you insist on trying to find out why she does what she does — because it’s not that she needs money, on the contrary — maybe you’d better ask yourself why not.
Consider that sex itself is not really what gets her off. Think that its depiction is largely left out of the picture. Instead, you could say the pleasure lies in how she conceives sex, how her desire is articulated, what she feels when she’s with an older man, and why she has a right to her own desire, whichever that is. And there’s also room for something far more ungraspable.
Although the ending could be rather predictable, it still makes sense in the best of ways. Arguably, it’s the only possible ending. One more thing: from time to time, Young and Innocent even dares to be tender in a restraint manner. And it still pays off.
