François Ozon, a onetime enfant terrible, has over the three decades since the beginning of his career been steadily making more conventional material.
His previous film In The House wittily examined the relationship between a teacher and his student blurring the lines between fact and fiction. His latest film Jeune & Jolie premiered in competition at Cannes but got slightly overshadowed by Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Colour; both films deal with teenage sexuality.
The nubile moneyed heroine in Ozon’s new seasonal melodrama is Isabelle (played impressively by model turned actress Marine Vacth) who after losing her virginity one summer embarks on a path of (barely legal) prostitution with mostly older men, ostensibly to pay for school, though she is clearly testing the socio-sexual boundaries set by herself and her family circle – a Belle de Jour for the millennial generation.
Following on previous investigations into young desire (Swimming Pool) Ozon subtly spotlights the psychology of sex and society’s relationship to it. Questions about the reasons for Isabelle’s choice of work are never fully answered, in fact we leave the film without a solution, which is course how it should be, sex and sexuality are complicated.
