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Rating:
From a gap in the bushes, offering a view of the beach, we voyeuristically observe a splendid teenager. Her body is slim, agile, soft, and firm. Her complexion is cappuccino-colored, her beautiful face with square, mildly masculine features and high cheekbones; a cascade of slightly wavy brown hair covering her forehead. A well-proportioned breast that at that age doesn't give a damn about gravity; but what makes Isabelle irresistible to us, small and helpless magnets sitting in cinema seats, are those ice-cold eyes. Inscrutable.
Ozon does not attempt to explain the period of life when people usually make the biggest mistakes: he prefers to simply act as a voyeur and follow this splendid girl in her process of growth. There are very few attempts to interpret an apparently senseless journey. Why would a 17-year-old girl from a good family seek to sell her body if the tens of thousands of euros she accumulates in a few months are not even spent? In those eyes, we glimpse boredom, the awareness of having the allure of an iced lemonade for a thirsty person in the desert. She knows she holds a dominant position over her intimidated peers, but even over most of her fifty-plus clients who fall in love with her and turn into warm clay. Perhaps Isabelle is bored and wants to test her beauty, constantly seeking approval in the form of money; as if it were a sport competition or a class assignment. 150 € a just passing grade, 300 € more than good, 500 € excellent.
We watch her through the keyhole in rather explicit sex scenes and deep down we don't care about her reasons because that flexible body is poetry in motion even when just walking down the street with that thick layer of melancholy that reappears right after hiding the monetary prize. “Jeune et Jolie” is a film I really liked because it discreetly captures, without pathetic and rhetorical moralism, an inexplicable age. In this context, the convincing and mature performance of Marine Vacth becomes highly significant and deserves applause.
I find it both insidious and fascinating that all adults, to consider themselves as such, must have gone through adolescence and had the time to digest it. The absurd thing is that despite this, the memory, the meaning of those actions, tends to gradually fade into the brain's recesses. An adult can no longer locate the thoughts that drove them in their youth to engage in that wonderful sequence of blunders; unfortunately, that thread almost completely disappears amidst the daily hustle and bustle of a life filled with schedules, commitments to manage, and millions of words, mostly useless, said to insignificant people while trying not to reveal one's true feelings.
It thus becomes normal for a parent to find a sixteen-year-old boy at home who's angry with the world and with whom it is impossible to talk and establish a dialogue. Different languages. While the father watches television, which airs a report on alcohol abuse, drugs, sex among the young at school, he cannot help but think of the tadpole, now grown and pimply, masturbating in the next room. He listens attentively to the report, and for a second, a question mark pops into his mind. “But no, what am I thinking: fortunately, these are problems that do not concern my children. They are naive, but overall chaste and innocent.”
Why it has to be this way, nobody knows. The problem is, adults at heart are a little gullible, credulous, and much more naive than you might think. Unable to keep pace with a generation that moves damn fast.
And the donkeys keep flying while they think their children are all lambs at the mercy of bad wolves. It doesn't occur to them that they could be bastards themselves.
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