Isabelle (Marine Vacth), a middle class teenager, loses her virginity while on a beach vacation. So as soon as she gets back to Paris she becomes a prostitute, charging aging businessmen 300 euros per after-school session.
As reactions to budding sexuality go, it’s a little extreme. And it’s also contrived; Isabelle’s decision never makes any emotional, let alone logical, sense.
Director François Ozon (who made the marvelous “Swimming Pool”) does raise some intriguing ideas about the allure Isabelle’s youth has for men, and the power they wield in return. The sex is sometimes erotic, sometimes degrading.
But Vacth, like the movie, is beautiful and resolutely humorless. There’s a lovely scene with a series of teens reciting a poem by Arthur Rimbaud; the catch is that these kids seem better company than Isabelle.