Young & Beautiful (2014)

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Isabelle is 17, astoundingly beautiful with many young men willing to have sex with her, yet she lives a double life as a prostitute for older men showing little to no interest in the money she obtains from it. So why does she do it? The way that Ozon answers this question is what makes the Film so interesting to watch, that and of course the fact that Marine Vacth, who plays young Isabelle brilliantly, is so intensely addicting to look at. "I could only make the film if I had an actress who was fascinating to look at[…] it had to be an actress that the viewer, and myself, wanted to look at – almost as you'd look at an insect."Isabelle's first sexual experience is cold, she feels used, she imagines herself watching with absolute disgust. After this experience she decides to be a prostitute serving older men in hotels. When one client doesn't pay the full agreed fee, it seems to distress Isabelle a lot more than what we'd expect considering she shows little use for the money she earns. But evidently its not the money that distresses her its the feeling that her sex isn't worth a lot, the doubt about her personal beauty, that men don't value her enough to pay the full amount. In the bar scene Isabelle has with Alice (Charlotte Rampling) Georges's widow, Alice tells Isabelle that she always wished men would pay to make love to her. Isabelle seems to relate to this and we see that they have reached an understanding. Alice is the only person in the film who seems to understand why Isabelle engaged in prostitution.One of her regular clients, Georges, treats her more tenderly, pays without her needing to ask and seems genuinely fulfilled by her. When she explains this to the psychiatrist and that Georges's death saddened her, we realize what she really wanted, affection from her lovers which would prove that she is desirable. But since affection seemed foreign to her, she wanted proof by making men pay high amounts of money just to screw her. The assurance thrilled her and made her enjoy arranging times to offer her services. Georges was special to her, he not only payed but also acted affectionately, he asked her about her life and didn't demand much of her.On the whole, the movie is brilliant. Marine Vacth's acting is superb, and Francois Ozon shows us in an articulate manner the inexplicable and unpredictable nature of a sexually-blossoming teenager's mindset.

Isabelle, a seventeen years old beautiful girl, who belongs to a middle class family with a good standing of living, who attends a good school in which she seems to be doing well, decides by herself to become a prostitute who fix rendezvous in hotel rooms, with customers much more old than her, via internet and mobile phone messaging.Her decision comes after an episode which happened during a summer vacation when she lost her virginity with a boy friend with respect to whom she was indifferent. This experience was unpleasant to her.The film don't give to the spectator any clue about the reason why she decided to become a prostitute. My interpretation is that, instead of developing her libido in a healthy way, she did it in a wrong and vicious way. Actually, she doesn't enjoy sex but enjoy the idea of behaving as a prostitute very well rewarded for her job.The story doesn't show this shocking behaviour as a disgrace, but just as something wrong.Eventually, after the death of a customer whom she liked, Georges, and the threats from both the police and her mother, she quits prostitution.The last scene in which the Georges' wife fix a rendezvous with her, in the same hotel room in which Georges died is very interesting, but also doesn't give any clue about what is right and what is wrong.Concluding, the film is interesting and caught my attention till the end, but it didn't answer my quests.

I have to tell that I was so disappointed by this movie that I left the theater about 40 minutes into the film. My summary is that life has already to many sordid things to sit in a film to look at the sordid world of a young woman turning herself into a call girl. I could not find any artistic value in this film, although it has some good photography. As to a plot other than the process of a girl turning into a whore, I could find none. Direction is mostly focused on showing the main actress tits. I found this film voyeuristic, void of plot and sordid. If you want to learn about this subject instead of going into this film, interview a young call girl. If you are a voyeur, you might like this piece of human garbage.

This film is incredibly slow and apathetic, but that's the beauty of it. Isabelle (Marine Vacth), a girl with a stable family who finds herself in a stable environment, is a strange creature. From what I've noticed, she only had a real connection with two people: her little brother and Alice (Charlotte Rampling). She decides to become a prostitute, even though she didn't need the money and could've had sex with any young guy, and her reasons to start doing such a thing aren't clear. François Ozon directed a film with a lot of million dollar questions.From my personal perspective, she did it for the taste and the thrill provided by the sense of being independent, of doing something dangerous and morally wrong. Even though she felt somewhat disgusted and guilty for having sex with strange men, she kept doing it to, somehow, prove herself that she didn't need anyone's approval to do what she wanted to do - in this case, a dangerous and morally wrong thing. She probably didn't plan to tell anyone, but her family found out in a bad way. I see her as a rebel hearted girl who feels trapped in a cage (in her case, her mother, society, morality, a nice and stable life) and who's holding back her feelings because, if she let them out, they might be too overwhelming - that's why she so apathetic all the time. Or maybe she just couldn't care less about anyone because life is boring and we're gonna die.I enjoyed the film. I enjoyed the photography, the scenarios, the actors, the language, etc. It's not an exciting production, though. It's the perfect movie to watch on a rainy Sunday, when there's nothing else to do.