Day Two of the festival continued to drip from the sky and on the screen as teens in trouble (or are they?) was the theme of the day.

You couldn’t really pick two more different views of teenage girls than Francois Ozon’s Young & Beautiful and Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring. The first is an intimate eight months with a 17-year-old, observing and never forcing her subtext to the surface, any more than one can with any 17-year-old girl. The other is all about surface, as a group of teens (all but one a girl) say everything they think all the time… but with nothing of significance to say, simply vomiting up their fame-driven view of happiness and success.

Interestingly, in both films, a male character who is conscious, but not really ready to express wisdom, is the “narrator,” if you will, or at least the point of entry.

Jeune & Jolie (Young & Beautiful) is another Ozon drama that is as dry as his campy films are wet. It’s hard to write about the film without spoilers, as the piece watches a young woman make choices that the audience is never quite able to anticipate. From the very first shot, in which she is being watched on a private beach cove from a distance, deciding whether she might dare to take her top off to sunbathe, to the very end, in which she engages a “ghost” of herself, the whim and pain of youth is really all that guides her.

I expect that many writers will have a hard time getting over an often-naked beauty as anything but exploitation, not unlike people unable to get past Richard Pryor’s language. There is a prudish attitude amongst many seemingly hip people that is spiked by the idea of a film actually addressing sexuality without clear (perhaps harsh) judgements. This is one reason I love Ozon as a filmmaker. He tells stories that almost no one else does, about people who have power or assets or confidence. He does not artistically abandon these people because they “have no right” to complain… who might be unsympathetic because they don’t suffer “the right way.”

For me, what completely clicked in Young & Beautiful – and I saw it twice on the day – is that it captured the terse, illogical, stuttering, passionate, dispassionate, disappointed, angry, thrilling journey of a young woman who is profoundly empowered by the birthright of her looks. Really, it isn’t that much different than other girls’ struggles. It’s simply heightened by the peculiar asset of her looks and the choices she makes.

Moreover, the film speaks to the ongoing struggle of many women with this power… the unspoken truths, the changing roles, the wildcard in a life. No woman in the film is living a life completely on the surface.

So far, the response of female critics I have heard from and read has been dismissive. But not to put too fine a point on it, this story may seem absurd and unreal to some, but I know more than one of these women. I grew up with a slew of them. And their seemingly high-drama turn can be, in reality, quite banal.

It is as obvious and unimaginably convoluted as… well… women. And I mean that in much the way I would suggest that men tend to be much simpler, lacking the mystery that makes women irresistible to the heterosexual male (which is no excuse for male self-indulgence, another issue altogether).

The discussion of Ozon’s sexuality is an interesting one, which is unlikely to be much engaged. He makes a lot of movies about female power, whether the dramas or the high camp. Does the inclination of the filmmaker matter when it comes to putting the work in perspective? Hmmmm…

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