“No one’s serious at seventeen.” This line from Rimbaud’s 1870 poem “Novel,” which features in François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, proves a passé perspective for the film’s protagonist. Isabelle, the young and beautiful woman in question, is followed through four seasons each paired with a musical motif by the irreplaceable Françoise Hardy.
The film begins with a summer romance — not unlike the subject of the Rimbaud poem — between Isabelle and a German boy. The first of four seasons portrayed in the film seems at first like a typical coming-of-age story: A pretty, white, 17-year old girl on vacation with her affluent parents sneaks out of her summer home to lose her virginity on the beach to a boy she’ll likely never see again. Star-crossed lovers? Not likely. Ozon’s take on the cliché shows that our young protagonist gains self-awareness upon her first sexual encounter. She realizes her power and regrets not the loss of her “innocence,” but the loss of her pleasure.
Autumn sees Isabelle back in business: not just back to secondary school and her teenaged friends, but also secretly managing herself as a sex worker meeting clients at hotels and in carparks, and making a tidy sum in the process. At this point we wonder, why would a beautiful girl, who has everything going for her, waste her youth on prostitution?
What is so successful about Ozon’s Young & Beautiful is its refusal to dehumanize sex work. Isabelle is a young woman living in a public world polluted with images of girls her age as sexual objects and a private Internet world of pornography which is more accessible than ever. She believes that she is in charge of her body, and is simultaneously empowered and alienated by her independence.
The winter brings melodrama in Isabelle’s life worthy of the films of Fassbinder or Sirk, and it is clear that the film was shot on celluloid to maintain the cinematic spell of stories past (unlike another film last year on blooming female sexuality, Blue is the Warmest Colour).
Young & Beautiful seems nostalgic for a time it never knew: new German melodrama, the sparkle of celluloid, and the longing lyrics of Françoise Hardy.
While the film suffers due to its sometimes overwrought musical score, Young & Beautiful is ultimately a successful portrayal of a young woman who is multifaceted: she is assertive and independent, yet deeply curious and ignorant. Ozon takes his protagonist seriously and this lack of condescension leads to the unique portrayal of Isabelle in a humanistic and empathetic way.
Young & Beautiful rejects the idea, expressed in “Novel” by Rimbaud, that young women are objects to be goggled at. In this way, everyone is serious at 17 — and it’s still rare to see that portrayed with such accuracy in film.
