The Beautiful Person (French: La belle personne) is a 2008 French drama television film directed by Christophe Honoré.[1]
The plot is related to the seventeenth-century French novel La Princesse de Clèves. It is a story about Junie (Léa Seydoux), after she transfers to another school that her cousin Mathias (Esteban Carjaval-Alegria), attends. She catches the attention of a lot of people, especially Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), and Nemours (Louis Garrel), her Italian teacher. She was in Italian class and a record of Callas singing Lucia plays causing Junie to rush out crying leaving her affairs behind. Nemours sees her photo taken by another student and swipes it. After this, Nemours pursues her even though she has mixed feelings about it. He is so enamored by her that he breaks off his relationships with Florence, a teacher (Valerie Lang), and Marie, a student (Agathe Bonitzer). Nemours switches seats with Mathias during a field trip. Marie sees a letter left on the seat and it spreads throughout the student body. They all think it was written by Nemours for Junie. Mathias goes to Nemours and explains that it was his letter from another boy named Martin and asked him to say that it belonged to the teacher. One of Otto's friends from the Russian language class is asked to spy on her after Junie acts cold to Otto and sees Nemours acting tender to Junie. He mistakes it for kissing and Otto confronts Junie about the misunderstanding. She denies it and goes home. Otto kills himself the next day by jumping from a very high floor at school. After Otto's suicide, Junie skips school for three weeks coming only after Nemours tell Mathias that he will be taking sick leave until the end of the semester. Nemours follows Junie around and she decides to approach him. He asks for some time to talk to her and they are seen running around the city like children. He takes her back to his room where she starts talking about love. He takes her home where they set a date for 5pm the day after next. Nemours waits till seven, then calls Mathias. He comes down and tells him that she left yesterday and is not allowed to say where and to forget about her. She also said she never wanted to see him again. Junie is seen on a ship departing for somewhere else.