Isabelle is on vacation with her parents and kid brother in the South of France and she celebrates her 17th Birthday by losing her virginity to Felix a young German lad she met on the beach.  You can tell that to her its no fun at all and its more like a rite of passage and at one point she ‘leaves her body’ and can be seen looking down at herself wondering why she agreed to do this.

Come Fall and the family is back in Paris in their usual routines and Felix is but a distant memory.  Isabelle is back at school studying, but she’s now also got herself a very lucrative part time : she’s become an Hooker. One minute she’s in the classroom with her chums reading out loud Rimbaud’s poem ‘No One’s Serious at Seventeen’ and the next she is turning tricks with old men in luxury hotels.

She passes herself off as 20 years old, although non of her johns buy that as she looks much younger, but then she goes from losing her disdain for sex and actually starts enjoying it especially when one Georges one of her regulars treats so protectively.  Isabelle manages to fit her new secret life into her daily routines without anyone suspecting anything, until Georges dies in flagrante delicto and subsequently the Police coming looking for her.  

It’s now winter and once the beans are spilled, Isabelle’s horrified mother insists that she stops instantly, and that she signs up for therapy, and donates her rather impressive stash of earnings to charity.   She agrees to the first two, but insists that she will keep the money and use it to pay the Therapist.

Everyone is desperately interested in what makes a young woman from a wealthy and privileged family who has been spoilt choose to take such a path.  Even her stepfather who she hits on as by now Isabelle is aware the power that a pretty girl like her has over wanting middle-aged men.   

Come Spring and trying to turn over a new leaf Isabelle accepts an invitation to join her classmates at a party ….. something she has always avoided in the past.  She shocks the nervous boy who makes a clumsy pass at her by encouraging him to make out with her, although she stops at going home with him ‘never on the first night.’ And then they end up dating until a morning some weeks later and Isabelle wakes up to the fact that she is just going through the motions, and so breaks up with the love-lorn kid.  Its like Felix all over again.

And as the year almost comes full circle Isabelle turns on the cellphone she used for ‘Clients’ and finds lots of ‘bookings’.  She takes one that takes her back to the hotel where Georges died, and finds that the ‘client’ who has booked her is his widow.  She just wants to see Isabelle to asks questions and get some closure on her husband’s death.  By now Isabelle is beginning she also needs to ask herself some questions to make some sort of sense of where she is.

This however is a Francois Ozon penned/directed movie (and one of his best too) so you know that there will be several strands of the story that will never be tied up neatly.  It’s not so much that Ozon likes to confuse, but he does have more intriguing ends to his movies then other filmmaker.  Isabelle is remarkably calm and poised for someone so young that embarks on what seems to be an emotionless search for her identity.  Ozon hints at an issue with her father who has a new family now, and also at an act of rebellion against a mother who is cheating on her husband, plus the fact that Isabelle simply now realises the power she has just by being so very pretty.

Its the scarily convincing performance by the remarkable young actress Marine Vacth as Isabelle that makes this movie really sing. She is fortunate however that her scene with Georges’s widow, played by Charlotte Rampling is quite short , as its doesn’t matter how pretty and talented a young star is, they are simply no physical match for a screen idol like her.

Whilst we get all the wonderful touches we expect from Mr Ozon, we also get something we don’t expect and certainly want. I.E. him succumbing to French filmmaker’s fixation with using really cheesy pop music that kills any mood, whether it be sexy, romantic or just thoughtful.  In ‘8 Women’ is was camp; in this it is just annoying.

Ignoring the music (!) it’s still Ozon on top form , which is always a joy….. and it did almost win the Palme D’or at Cannes this year.

★★★★★★★★