Young & Beautiful

Director: François Ozon
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.0

A seventeen-year-old (Marine Vacth), after an unsatisfying first sexual experience with her German boyfriend, decides (for unknown reasons) to become a prostitute - she eventually develops feelings for a significantly older man (who dies in the act of coitus). Ozon, in keeping Vacth a blank slate of teenage confusion, does little to keep this from turning into a thinly-veiled story about Daddy Issues: Vacth's parents are divorced and her step-father's gaze isn't purely platonic. A little more of an exploration into Vacth's character's motivations might have made this a richer experience - instead what you're left with is Men Behaving Badly/Pervy and a dumb beautiful girl self-exploiting herself. The final meeting with her dead john's widow (Charlotte Rampling) does little to make one think she'll give up the trade.