No one is better at passing off vaguely lecherous movies as art like the French. Francois Ozon’s ‘Young and Beautiful’ offers one of the finest examples of that softly-lit intellectual pervert’s paradise in many years. Come for the boobs, stay for the thoughtful sadness.

Perhaps that’s a bit too harsh. For as brazingly sexually explicit as ‘Young and Beautiful’ can be, it’s above all else a muted, thoughtful and even disturbing study of a teenage girl coming to terms with her newfound sexuality. That girl is Isabelle (model-turned-actress Marine Vacth), a former tomboy who rings in her 17th birthday by losing her virginity to a German boy on a family summer vacation. She comes out of the experience disappointed and feeling nothing. By the fall, she’s working as a high-priced escort in Paris, sleeping with wealthy middle-aged men for cash after school.

So, quite a leap, and not one that ‘8 Women’ director Ozon dares attempt to explain. The film is teasingly ambiguous in nature, filmed with particularly French symbolism, sumptuous visuals, and pregnant silences punctuated by rounds of harshly realistic domestic drama. Though Isabelle manages to quietly live a double life for months, she’s eventually found out after an accident involving her favorite elderly client draws police attention. Soon, her mother (Geraldine Pailhas) learns of her afterschool job, and it inevitably tears the family apart before Ozon lingers on Isabelle for another few months and sees how the pieces subtly come back together in unexpected ways

Obviously, ‘Young and Beautiful’ is a salacious movie, yet never an exploitative one. From the first (creepy) scene, we see a nude Isabelle spied on by her brother. From there on, the entire movie turns into a series of scenes of men ogling the teen, with both the filmmaker and audience implicated in said ogling as well. It’s the type of device that’ll make Film 101 students go nuts in coffee shops, but one that Ozon at least only subtly leans on throughout the proceedings. Though he’s obviously working with an extreme example, the film is about a teen girl coming to terms with her sexuality, and this one oddly found a way to make it empowering. Isabelle is hardly ever presented as a victim, but someone deriving power (and money) from men’s desires. Vacth’s effectively muted performance keeps her motivations secretive as long as possible. When her dual life crashes down, we see her as a petulant child enjoying the fear she inspires in the adult women around her and her ability to manipulate all the adult men in her life. She’s a fairly complicated character who is impossible to love or hate, but all too easy to be fascinated by.

Ultimately, Ozon doesn’t mine the depths of where sexual desire meets sexual obsession in a manner as quite effectively as his obvious influence – Luis Bunuel’s ‘Belle de Jour‘. Aside from providing somewhat unsettlingly well-researched details into the contemporary world of internet escort services, ‘Young and Beautiful’ doesn’t really have that much new to say about its provocative subject. This is one of those French movies that hovers between art and softcore, which thankfully tips comfortably into latter category.

On at least the technical and visceral levels, the film is beautifully made in ways that deliver on the material’s scandalous, emotional and intellectual potential. Ozon simply doesn’t have much new to add to this subject beyond incorporating computers and cell phones. He’s delivered an interesting movie, but not a vital one. It’s certainly worth a look, especially for cinematic voyeurs who need subtitles and symbolism to feel less guilty about why they bought tickets to see this sort of movie.