François Ozon's fervent and well-acted drama about a 17-year-old girl exploring her sexuality by becoming a high-class call girl is very watchable … and entirely ridiculous. It has a stylish gloss and sexy glow, no doubt about it. Only French cinema could get away with it.

Yet once the credits roll, its essential absurdity and obtuseness become apparent: it's a solemn belle de jour tale with a touch of David Hamilton softcore, existing outside the grim reality of vulnerable women being abused and trafficked.

Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Colour was attacked as a movie for middle-aged men; that charge could be made far more powerfully against Jeune & Jolie.

Yet it has to be said that Marine Vacth is excellent as Isabelle, the schoolgirl with a secret life as a €500 prostitute, and Géraldine Pailhas and Frédéric Pierrot give gentle and warm performances as her mum and stepdad.

Isabelle experiences her sexual awakening on holiday after a so-so encounter with a German boy, and her kid brother Victor (Fantin Ravat) is saucer-eyed at Isabelle's seemingly exciting private life – I suspect Ozon himself is present, in the young Victor. The film's intense seriousness can only be appreciated by not taking it too seriously.