THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON (2008): A French Teen Student-Teacher Sexual Affair

The Beautiful Person (2008) [La belle personne] is about a French love triangle between Mr. Jacques Nemours (Louis Garrel) - a lycée [i.e., high school] teacher. Junie (Léa Seydoux) - a 16-year-old transfer student. And Otto - Junie’s boyfriend. 

In addition, Mr. Nemours is having an affair with Marie, a redhead student, whom tells her boyfriend, “I’m not coming with you tonight,” before she arrived, unannounced to Mr. Nemours’ apartment building. 

Mr. Nemours: “Why are you here?”

Marie: “Guess. Can I come up?”

Marie’s teacher doesn’t allow her to “come up” - this time. (Previously, they had teacher-student sex four “quick” times.) However, Mr. Nemours informed Marie that he wanted to end their age-gap affair. 

“Please just leave.”

“You’re ashamed of me. That’s the truth, you’re ashamed.”

“No. I’m not ashamed. I just want our relationship to stop here. I’m breaking it off.”

“Four quick fucks! You call that a relationship?”

“Fine then. You screwed a teacher.”

“Why are you lying to me? Why not say there’s someone else? Who’s next in line?”

But there is someone else. You guessed it. Junie - the new brunette student. Consequently, before Mr. Nemours kissed Marie on the cheek, he said, “Go on. It doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. OK?” To which Marie replied, “[B]ut it’s very painful to leave you, sir.”

Two interesting conversations about age-gap slash teacher-student affairs took place in a café. After noticing that Mr. Nemours was admiring a photograph of Junie, the propriétaire said, “Young girls ought to be respected.” To which Mr. Nemours replied, “Loving them isn’t disrespecting them.” 

And in a conversation between Mr. Nemours and a math teacher, the math teacher warned, “You shouldn’t fool around with students. It’s too easy.” But Mr. Nemours replied that it wasn’t easy, that he was “love-sick” for Junie, but that Junie couldn’t resist loving him too. 

[Note: The math teacher’s stance that it’s “too easy” to “fool around with students” could be misleading, because in the majority of non-fiction and fiction teacher-student relationships, it’s only “too easy” if the student is initially attracted to her teacher. And this attraction is very often attained without any grooming on the part of the teacher, because, we would argue, most teachers don’t have the audacity or know-how to groom a student; however, admittedly, most teachers, to their often ultimate dismay, do not have the ability to resist the allure of a nymphet. Hence, the plethora of age-gap and student-teacher relationships in fiction and non-fiction. Concepción de León wrote in her New York Times review of Art of Love (2022): “And the film reinforces the fiction that it is often younger women [students] who seduce older men [professors] and not the other way around.” But de León has it (mostly) wrong and the film has it (mostly) right. Thus, Mr. Nemours is an anomaly.]

Mr. Nemours said, “It’s not easy with her. You’ve got no idea […] I’m in a total love-sick mess […] I’m just head-over-heels in love […] I know I’ve got to calm down, get a grip, but I can’t. I just can’t […] That girl will never love me. I’m lying to myself. She can’t not love me.”

Mr. Nemours’ pua technique of assumed attraction was correct, because Junie informed Otto that she was “fleeing” the lycée to avoid falling in love [with Mr. Nemours].

“I’m going away to protect myself from someone here. The truth is, I’m fleeing.” 

“Someone you’re in love with?”

“Someone I don’t want to love […] I’m going away not to fall in love. I respect you Otto. I’m telling you that because I care for you.”

“You care for me but love another.”

Subsequently, to appease Otto, Junie let him massage and kiss her bare fountains - behind the lycée. But Otto was determined to find out Junie’s love interest; so, he asked a classmate to be a spy. And the spy discovered and reported to Otto that Junie’s love interest was Mr. Nemours. Consequently, Otto committed suicide. #smh

In the end, Junie informed her “handsome” teacher that she feared having an affair with him, because she couldn’t “survive” if he left her “to love another”.

“If I give myself to you, you’ll go off […] I’m not a fool. You’re handsome. Everyone likes you […] one day, you’ll leave to love another that you will find more pleasing. And I won’t survive. Not to mention the jealousy. “

“It won’t work Junie. You can’t hold out against our love.” 

And knowing that Mr. Nemours was correct about her not being able to resist their teacher-student love, Junie left Paris. 

The Beautiful Person (2008)  was based on the novel La Princesse de Clèves (1678). And Léa Seydoux won the Best Actress category at the Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur and the Female Revelation of the Year Trophée Chopard Award for her role in the award nominated film.

Famous Age-Gap Couples: Suede Brooks, Drake & Scott Disick

Eileen Reslen reported for Page Six that "Drake goes ‘yacht hopping’ with YouTuber Suede Brooks in St. Tropez" (July 20, 2022). Reslen's report is relevant, because Drake is 35 and Brooks is 21.

Suede Brooks' TikToks

And per Leah Sarnoff‍'s Entertainment Tonight post "Drake and YouTube Star Suede Brooks 'Having Fun Together' Amid St. Tropez Trip" (July 20, 2022): "They are sweet, whispering in each other's ears and laughing." Aww...

But Drake and Brooks have age-gap associations from the past. For example, in 2018, 31-year-old Drake reportedly dated 18-year-old Bella Harris. 

Marissa G. Muller asked for W Magazine "Who is Bella Harris, Drake’s Rumored New Girlfriend?" In the piece, Muller wrote that: "Drake has a new love interest, but she’s not yet old enough to try his Virginia Black whiskey [...] Who is she? Harris, 18 years old, has known Drake for at least two years." That's correct. The age-gap couple met, when Harris was 16, but didn't, reportedly, start dating until a few months after she graduated from high school. 

And speaking of 16-year-old nymphets, the last time we wrote about YouTuber Brooks, we learned from the Daily Mail that "Scott Disick, 34, keeps his head down as he parties in NYC with teens Suede Brooks, 16 [...]" That's correct. 16-year-old Brooks, along with 18-year-old Madison Beer and 19-year-old Delilah Hamlin, was partying in the Big Apple with the 34-year-old Disick - an open famous ephebophile. 

Interestingly, like Leonardo DiCaprio, neither Drake nor Disick have received widespread backlash for their inabilities to (openly) resist the allure of nymphets. Why? Well, one reason may be that they all similar vibes that exudes that they're, like Hef, unapologetic about their age-gap relationships. 

Tao Lin’s RICHARD YATES: A Teen Age-Gap Sexual Affair | Illegal in NY Yet Legal In NJ

Here’s Amazon’s synopsis of Tao Lin’s Richard Yates:

[...] cult favorite Tao Lin presents a dark and brooding tale of illicit love that is his most sophisticated and mesmerizing writing yet.

Richard Yates is named after real-life writer Richard Yates, but it has nothing to do with him. Instead, it tracks the rise and fall of an illicit affair between a very young writer and his even younger--in fact, under-aged--lover. As he seeks to balance work and love, she becomes more and more self-destructive in a play for his undivided attention. His guilt and anger builds in response until they find themselves hurtling out of control and afraid to let go.

In the novel, to assure her mother that 22-year-old Haley Joel Osment (HJO) wasn’t a “creep” and that he wasn’t going to rape her, 16-year-old Dakota Fanning (DF) informed her mother that HJO was a New York University graduate and that he was an “autistic vegan”. Interestingly, DF’s mother assumed that HJO was: “[...] like 35 or something.”

Subsequently, to arrange their first encounter, DF informed HJO, via Gmail chat, that she was going on a field trip to a museum in Manhattan where he: “[...] could find her and sit by her and they could eat together.”

To visit DF, HJO had to take a 10 minute train ride from Penn Station to Secaucus. Then a two hour train ride from Secaucus to DF’s town where the age-of-consent was 16.

With fifty minutes to go before HJO’s return train was scheduled to depart, DF suggested that, instead of going back to Manhattan,: “[...] he could hide in her room. “Your mom,” said Haley Joel Osmet. Dakota Fanning said her mom wouldn’t know.”

HJP was reassured after he remembered that: “Dakota said she sleeps naked and her mother is afraid of seeing her naked and so never opens her door at night.” And DF had previous age-gap relationships (e.g., “[...] with a 26-year-old and a 28-year-old.”). She even ran away to Philly to be with a man.

They didn’t have sex that first night, but they kissed:

“Around 2:00 a.m. their heads and bodies were under blankets with their lips touching but not kissing. Haley Joel Osment stared at Dakota Fanning’s face. After a few minutes she kissed him with dry lips. He licked her lips and kissed her[...]”

Unsurprisingly, HJO returned a week later where, on her mother’s king size bed, DF performed oral sex on HJO. 

For their next age-gap rendezvous, DF skipped school and traveled to Manhattan where: “[...] they walked to Union Square and went to bookstores and ate at Whole Foods.” But on DF’s subsequent visit, she stayed the night at HJP’s three-person apartment on Wall Street where they had sex after DF suggested that HJP “Just pull out,” because “[...] she could only get pregnant at certain times.”

Interestingly, in a scene that feminists would consider counterintuitive, DF informed HJO, “I’m going to rape you” and sat on him and began to rape him and then they had sex.”

And that’s the essence of the novel, HJO and DF watched independent films like at the Angelika Film Center, they stole books from Barnes & Noble, they stole clothes from American Apparel, they ate porridge at restaurants on the LES, and they had sex in Manhattan, where it was illegal, and they had sex in New Jersey, where it was legal - sometimes outdoors and (eventually) with the consent of DF’s mother. 

Tao Lin (≈ 23) and Ellen Kennedy (≈ 17) | Circa 2006

Lastly, Tao Lin’s Richard Yates (2010) is an autobiographical novel. Consequently, per Jezebel, in 2014 and approximately nine years after their age-gap affair, DF (Ellen Kennedy) accused Lin of statutory rape and verbal abuse.

Wait, it turns out that Ellen's a writer too. Here's an excerpt from "i like every time we have sex". The piece was posted on 3:AM Magazine (March 27th, 2007) and it appears that Ellen wrote "i like every time we have sex" when she was approximately 18.