Francois Ozon splits this film into four seasons, each one scored to a different Francoise Hardy song. Summer is a family holiday on the coast where 17-year-old Isabelle loses her virginity to a German boy and feels nothing much. Autumn is back in Paris, where she has quietly started meeting older men in hotel rooms for money. Young & Beautiful is not a film about why she does it, and Ozon refuses to answer that question for the whole 95 minutes.
Four Seasons In The Life Of Isabelle
Isabelle keeps her school life and her hotel life in separate boxes until one of her regular clients, a gentle man in his sixties, dies during one of their meetings. The police trace her, her mother finds out, and winter becomes a family in pieces. Spring brings a strange closing scene with Charlotte Rampling as the dead man’s widow that gives the film its final shape. Marine Vacth, a former model in her first lead role, plays Isabelle with a blank calm that makes the adults around her, especially her mother played by Geraldine Pailhas, look like the ones who are lost.
What Makes The Film Different From Other Teen Dramas
There is no villain, no trauma reveal and no lecture. Ozon shoots Paris in flat daylight and lets the Hardy songs carry the mood. It premiered in competition at Cannes in 2013. The film is in French with English subtitles and is for adult viewers.
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