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What was the catalyst forYOUNG & BEAUTIFUL?

Directing Ernst Umhauer and Bastien Ughetto for INTHE HOUSEwas such a pleasure I wanted to work with young actors again. Myearly shorts and features explored adolescence, but from UNDERTHE SAND on, I’ve worked essentially with older actors. SoYOUNG & BEAUTIFUL started with my desire to film the youthof today. And since I had just filmed boys, I wanted to film a youngwoman.

Isabelle is not just any young woman – she’s working as a prostitute.

The film is about what it feels like to be seventeen and experiencingthe transformation of one’s body. Adolescence is often idealized incinema. For me it was a painful period of complicated transition andI’m not nostalgic about it. I didn’t want to depict adolescence merelyas an emotional time but also and above all as a hormonal one. Ourbodies go through intense physiological changes, and yet we feel kindof numb. So we assault our bodies in order to feel, we test our limitsphysically.The theme of prostitution provides a way to highlight this, toillustrate the questions of identity and sexuality raised by adolescence.Sexuality not yet connected to emotion.

Isabelle’s family is financially comfortable, so she’s not doing it forthe money.

Isabelle isn’t turning tricks to survive or to pay for school, she feels avisceral need to do it. She could have just as easily gotten into drugsor become anorexic, as long as it was something secret, clandestine,forbidden. Adolescence is a fertile period when anything is possible.That’s what’s so exhilarating about it, what comes across in Rimbaud’spoem No One’s Serious At Seventeen. You’re open to the world,unconcerned with morals. Isabelle is experimenting, embarking on ajourney, her foray into prostitution is not a perversion.

Isabelle is not so much exploring pleasure as she is confronting herabsence of emotion, notably when she loses her virginity. During a conversation with Marina deVan I got the idea of showingduality in the character at the critical moment of her deflowering.Boys and girls alike may experience an out-of-body sensation as theydiscover their sexuality. You’re both there and not there, actor andobserver.That scene prepares the audience for Isabelle’s double life. The film opens on Isabelle as seen through her little brother’sbinoculars. Right away, she is objectified by a stolen gaze that“violates” her privacy. Absolutely. Isabelle’s behavior sets off strong repercussions andprovokes powerful reactions from those close to her. Each seasonbegins with the point of view of a different character. Summer isIsabelle’s brother, autumn is her client, winter is her mother and springis her stepfather – though each time we rapidly shift back to Isabelle. Iwanted to move through the film in a circular fashion around the fourseasons. As in 5X2, I’m concentrating on specific moments to explorewhat’s going on. There is also a Françoise Hardy song for each season. Yes. I like to set up a formal framework inside which I have totalfreedom. It was important to me that the story should take placeover one school year. The songs come like punctuation, suspendedmoments. This is my third time using Françoise Hardy songs, afterTraüme in WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS and MessagePersonnel in 8 WOMEN. I really like how she captures the essence ofteen love: the heartbreak, the disillusions, the romance… I found itinteresting to juxtapose this iconic viewpoint with a more raw portraitof Isabelle. Deep down Isabelle yearns to embrace this sentimental,idealized model of adolescence, and her parents also want that for her.But she must find herself, and confront her contradictions, before shecan fall in love. Subway escalators, hotel hallways… you play with recurring locationsas Isabelle goes to meet her clients. Like all clandestine experiences it becomes a ritual, involving acostume and recurring locations.The ritualistic aspect is what Isabellelikes: connecting on the internet, imagining who the clients willbe, negotiating the price, going to meet them, etcetera. She tells thepsychiatrist that she feels almost nothing during the actual act – what

excites her about prostitution is the adventure of it, the exhilaration ofengaging in an illicit activity that breaks the monotony of her teenageexistence. Many of the characters in my films share a desire to escapereality.At the end of the film some audience members are convincedshe’ll start hooking again, that she’s addicted to it, like a drug. Teenage prostitution is a big issue right now. How did you approachthis story without turning it into a sociological study? I did my research, of course, because things have changed since I wasa teenager, notably the means of communication used to learn aboutsex: cell phones, internet… In my day, it was the Minitel! So I wentlooking for information. I met with police officers who work withjuveniles, others who specialize in new forms of prostitution, andpsychoanalyst Serge Hefez, who works with troubled teens. I neededthis material to confirm my hunches and enrich the film. But then Ineeded to detach from it and let fiction take over. Isabelle’s father is absent but you don’t use that to explain herbehavior. No. I provide a few clues that people can latch onto, or not. Thereasons for Isabelle’s behavior are many. Everyone is free to interpretit in their own way. I like for the audience to have that freedom.Thisyoung woman is a mystery to me, too. I’m not ahead of her, I’m simplyfollowing her, like an entomologist gradually falling in love with thecreature he’s studying. She says very little. The only time she opensup is during her second visit to the shrink.The idea is to accompanyher, identify with her. We identify with much of what Isabelle andher parents are going through, undoubtedly because the situations areanchored in reality and the actors are very convincing. Each characteris reeling from a complex situation, trying to handle it the best theycan. How did you approach the sex scenes? I wanted them to be fairly realistic, but not degrading or sordid. Iwanted to avoid moral judgments. Obviously some of the clients are abit deviant, but the point is to show how Isabelle adapts. Isabelle is onthe receiving end of other people’s desire when she has yet to discoverher own. In a certain sense it suits her that others feel desire in herplace. I didn’t want to embellish reality, but in a sense, Isabelle may bedoing that herself.