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Pretty Baby (Louis Malle, 1978)
Pretty Baby (Louis Malle, 1978)
I thought this was a pretty darn good movie and I was surprised by just how well made it was. I was expecting the worst after hearing about the controversy that had surrounded this movie. But to my surprise, Pretty Baby was a fresh introspective look into the world of the women who worked in New Orleans brothels at the turn of the 20th century.
The movie does world building quite well and we see in detail the inner workings of a brothel and from the women's viewpoint, which is unusual for a film. Had this been made by another director the story might have been focused on a man's point of view, and the 'whores' would've been nameless bodies with no real value to the film. So many films are made from the male only viewpoint, leaving the stories of women in the shadows, but not Pretty Baby.
Brooke Shields did an excellent acting job as a young girl entering puberty...and entering rather nonchalantly into the world of a prostitute. The script brilliantly handles what happens to young girls who become sexualizied at a too young of age. It's an honest description of how being exposed causes young Violent to act out overtly sexual, when she's clearly not old enough to be doing so. Most of what she does is in the form of boasting and trying to be grown up. The most clear example of that is when she tries to force a younger boy to have sex with her and is stopped by the boys mother with the warning that whites and blacks don't mix.
At the end of the film her mother and new husband comes to retrieve Violent who's now married to the adult photographer. The film reinforces to the viewer that Violent despite her upbringing is still a child who wants only to be with her mother. I liked that the film never builds Spielberg like sympathy for these characters and neither does it demonize them...it simply shows us the end results.
There are a lot of deep themes in Pretty Baby about the damage that sex abuse causes to women. It's too bad a couple brief semi nude scenes of Brooke Shields has overshadowed an important movie.
The movie does world building quite well and we see in detail the inner workings of a brothel and from the women's viewpoint, which is unusual for a film. Had this been made by another director the story might have been focused on a man's point of view, and the 'whores' would've been nameless bodies with no real value to the film. So many films are made from the male only viewpoint, leaving the stories of women in the shadows, but not Pretty Baby.
Brooke Shields did an excellent acting job as a young girl entering puberty...and entering rather nonchalantly into the world of a prostitute. The script brilliantly handles what happens to young girls who become sexualizied at a too young of age. It's an honest description of how being exposed causes young Violent to act out overtly sexual, when she's clearly not old enough to be doing so. Most of what she does is in the form of boasting and trying to be grown up. The most clear example of that is when she tries to force a younger boy to have sex with her and is stopped by the boys mother with the warning that whites and blacks don't mix.
At the end of the film her mother and new husband comes to retrieve Violent who's now married to the adult photographer. The film reinforces to the viewer that Violent despite her upbringing is still a child who wants only to be with her mother. I liked that the film never builds Spielberg like sympathy for these characters and neither does it demonize them...it simply shows us the end results.
There are a lot of deep themes in Pretty Baby about the damage that sex abuse causes to women. It's too bad a couple brief semi nude scenes of Brooke Shields has overshadowed an important movie.