This year’s “Nymphomaniac” tackled a seriously controversial subject, sex and lots of it, with style and perverse humor in the way only Lars von Trier can. So if you can’t make that movie full of cinematic flourish, you might consider making one much more, for lack of a better term, stripped down.
Francois Ozon’s “Young & Beautiful” removes the religious symbolism and outrageous behavior from von Trier’s film to make something much more real, but he’s also sapped it of its sexier qualities. It’s “Nymphomaniac” without any of the humor, style or strong sense of ideas.
It begins on a weekend when the 17-year-old Isabelle (Marine Vacth) loses her virginity to a hunky German teen. Clearly the sex is not what she expected, and Isabelle comes across cold and apathetic afterwards. Yet several weeks later, she takes up a job as a call girl, lying about her age and sleeping with older men for money after school.
Isabelle remains a blank slate to all of her encounters, emoting very little and showing no interest in the pleasure, the company nor the money. She’s most concerned with her meticulous appearance within her double life, a freckled, surly, tomboyish teen when off the job, a dolled up, professional looking runway model when on it.
Clearly “Young & Beautiful” isn’t about the sex, although there is a lot of it, much of it queasy, voyeuristic and uncomfortable considering Isabelle’s age. But as a portrait of a mysterious teen going through her coming-of-age, Ozon’s story is quite thin. Her parents are oblivious and may as well be absent, but Isabelle’s reactionary behavior around them, including one instance of trying to seduce her stepdad, are frustratingly ambiguous considering Ozon’s abrupt editing and Vatch’s minimal expressions.
Conversely, as a portrait of a bad person, one who acts as a provocateur, lies and later thrives on her notorious reputation, Ozon maybe doesn’t go far enough. “Nymphomaniac’s” Joe could be a monster, but she had a bizarre order, reason and philosophy to her madness. Isabelle doesn’t know what she believes and Ozon doesn’t care to say. “Young & Beautiful’s” set pieces are enough to make it feel realistic, but bizarre and scandalous enough for Isabelle to be impervious to empathy.
Ozon’s film is so frustratingly opaque and ambiguous that it can make you feel as cold and distant as Isabelle.
2 ½ stars
I don’t know that Nymphomaniac is really the best film to judge it against. There similarities are mostly superficial. Belle de Jour might have been a better comparison, one that helped to tease this film apart.
Belle du Jour is certainly the better comparison, although I don’t know if this and Nymphomaniac are that different. Obviously this isn’t a von Trier movie, but they’re both kind of about a girl using sex as a vehicle for a coming of age, and yet sex doesn’t have the meaning or importance it does in its typical connotation.
Regardless, I more or less mention that as a basis to my bigger point which is that I found Young and Beautiful frustratingly vague and ambiguous (all by design, of course) and the character to be somewhat troubling, whereas I’d argue I saw the same traits in Joe’s character in Nymphomaniac and didn’t mind as much because of the nature of that film.