Young & Beautiful

Vacth is persuasively adolescent at the outset, distressingly jaded at the finale, and in between, is entirely capable of making young-and-beautifu...

The film is a potentially florid coming-of-age story that’s remarkably cool to the touch, not nearly as outrageous in execution as it is...

A nuanced, emotionally temperate study of a precocious youth.

It’s remarkably assured and subtle work, worthy of comparison to Catherine Deneuve’s brilliantly blank turn in Buñuel’s film.

This is a different kind of coming-of-age story.

It is piquant, disconcerting, graceful, enigmatic, implacable – and just a little scary.

Ozon doesn’t really spell anything out for us. He uses Vacth, a beauty who somewhat resembles the young Nastassja Kinski or Dominique Sanda...

The film’s increasingly unnerving story mostly unfolds with minimal flair, intensely focused as it is on its steely and enigmatic protagonist.

It elevates what could be just another ballad-of-a-hooker drama into something far more mysterious.

Taken as a whole, the movie is far-fetched and even faintly ridiculous; and yet, in the moment to moment, it’s compelling and truthful.

Much of the picture feels – to these cloth-eared sensibilities anyway – profoundly and irredeemably dubious.

Young and Beautiful doesn’t have the eerie power of some of Ozon’s other films, like "In the House" or "Swimming Pool," but it is still...

Ozon is more interested in a woman’s pleasure than her pain; he prefers films about small female triumphs, rather than their grand trage...

A fascinating contemplation of adolescent sexuality that will be a star-making platform for its young lead, Marine Vacth.

A movie that bluntly shows a 17-year old girl exploding sex all over the screen.

His (Francois Ozon) theme could hardly be less original (think of "Bonjour Tristesse"), but the tautness is that of a horror film. [5 May...

"Young and Beautiful" doesn’t have the eerie power of some of Ozon’s other films, like "In the House" or "Swimming Pool," but it is sti...

The crisp elegance of Ozon’s style commands your interest, even as the film’s blank psychology pays dwindling dividends.

Though undeniably intelligent, "Young and Beautiful" would lack a compelling center were it not for Vacth’s fascinatingly ambiguous turn...

François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful is, in the very best sense, a film that won’t add up.

Figuring out Isabelle’s character is a compelling mystery, but it would have been nice for Ozon to offer a few more clues.

Vacth, who is beautiful, angular and coltish, brings a quietly authoritative, contemplative, undemonstrative quality to the role: she has ...

Young & Beautiful is mysterious and erotic, though the ending may leave some as cold as Isabelle.

Something happens to Franois Ozon’s people when they get near the water.

There is just something slightly skewed, slightly uncontrolled, beneath Pailhas' reasonable exterior.

The film’s increasingly unnerving story mostly unfolds with minimal flair, intensely focused as it is on its steely and enigmatic protagonist.

Ozon keeps things simmering without quite boiling over, even when convention might demand it.

Jeune et Jolie plays a little like Belle de Jour, but quite without Buuel’s beady-eyed subversion; Ozon is more concerned with keeping t...

Young & Beautiful, with its barrage of fairly graphic sex scenes, is a throwback to the erotically charged, envelope-pushing Euro art-house fi...

Another typically assured piece of work from Ozon with a showstopping turn from newcomer Vacth.

Trying to figure out Isabelle keeps the viewer engaged, and Vacth’s focused acting justifies her being almost continually in the frame.

At times a rich, intimate observation of emerging sexuality, the movie also maintains a quiet, observational rhythm that peaks around win...

It’s the kind of film that’s not afraid to acknowledge that people are fundamentally mysterious, and much of its power comes from the m...

A fascinating contemplation of adolescent sexuality that will be a star-making platform for its young lead, Marine Vacth.

Ozon keeps the melodrama at bay to deliver a typically subversive study of growing pains. And in Vacth he’s found a real star-in-waiting.

He uses Vacth, a beauty who somewhat resembles the young Nastassja Kinski or Dominique Sanda, for her eerie, implacable hauteur. There is a ma...

Vacth has a seductive, covert intelligence. She may not let viewers in on Isabelle’s motives, but she does suggest that something is goi...