Pretty Baby (1978) - film review

12 year old Violet lives in a brothel with her mother, Hattie, in Storyille, the red-light district of New Orleans.  The year is 1917, a few months away from the outlawing of prostitution and the end of Storyville.  When her mother leaves the brothel to start a respectable life, Violet remains and allows her virginity to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  She finds herself drawn to a photographer, Bellocq, who is taking portraits of Storyville prostitutes.  Realising that she is love, the young Violet declares her intention to marry Bellocq...

With Pretty Baby, acclaimed French New Wave director Louis Malle continued one of the dominant themes in his oeuvre, namely the corruption of young adolescents by their environment.  It follows Le Souffle au coeur (1971), which dealt with the thorny subject of incest within a repressed Bourgeois family setting, and Lacombe Lucien (1974), in which a teenage boy is seduced by the idea of Nazi supremacy during World War Two.  In Pretty Baby, Malle broached the subject of child prostitution, a taboo too far in the eyes of many censors and film critics.  The film was hugely controversial when it was released in the late 1970s, with a number of countries demanding cuts, prevaricating over its release or simply banning it outright.  Twenty years on, it is hard to see what the fuss was about – Malle’s self-restraint is painfully evident and whilst the film’s subject may offend some sensibilities, its bland, lackadaisical treatment is far more likely to bore than to shock.

The film’s slow pace and Malle’s unwillingness to push the boundaries of decency too far make Pretty Baby a far from perfect cinematic work.  It certainly does not stand up favourably in comparison with the director’s early achievements (and even some of his later American films).  The film’s artistic strengths lie mainly in its set design and photography, which give an authentic recreation of the 1917 Storyville setting, and its pleasing ragtime score.   In her first screen role, Brooke Shields is something of a revelation, her mature, charismatic presence easily eclipsing the rather lacklustre contributions from her fellow actors.  Her portrayal of Violet touchingly shows how the innocence of childhood can be soiled by adult perversion.  Unfortunately, the film does not allow Shields to convey the true extent of her character’s trauma and she comes across much more as a willing participant in her situation than a victim.  Instead of dwelling on the destructive nature of child prostitution, Louis Malle gives a non-committal, possibly naïve, presentation of the subject in an idealised setting, with a false "happy ending" which diminishes much of the film’s impact.

© James Travers 2002

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