Pretty Baby

1978 • 109 minutes

About this movie

Internationally acclaimed director Louis Malle has taken a taboo subject - child prostitution - and has created in Pretty Baby a film of humanity and beauty. E.J. Bellocq (Keith Carradine) is a photographer obsessed with the prostitutes in New Orleans' red-light district. Violet (12-year-old Brooke Shields), a young girl in 1917, bewitches Carradine with her curiosity and naive coquettishness. Malle's level-headed treatment of this controversial theme and exceptional performances by the entire cast (especially Susan Sarandon as Violet's prostitute mother) makes Pretty Baby a must-see for all serious film fans.

Ratings and reviews

Having lived thru something similar i say this is absolutely beautifully done and yet still retains a good level of truthful reality. My mother sold me daily growing up from a very young age and it took everything I had to keep myself and to always remember where I came from and work towards better.I can say from experience that she thought she was in love bcause he gave her everything she thought she wanted & he treated her well emotionally and I toothought at her age that you don't get both.

This us an excellent well written movie, and sharea the harsh reality of truthful history. I will say this film is guaranteed to piss off any politically correct activist or sexual predator who tries to employ misdirection of political correctness to hide their behaviors.

[Spoiler Alert} I realize the hatred this movie brings with it. Please try to understand the message BEHIND all of it. At the end of the movie this young girl still chooses to go with her mother. What does that mean? More importantly what is that dead gaze she gave at the very end of the film mean? The meaning of this story is to challenge our perspective. Am I saying a child (and I do mean CHILD) know what love really is? NO! Love stands the test of time, a child merely lives in his or her own fantasies. Is this not the point of childhood? To dream and live in the dream he or she creates? (While never ignoring her parents' cry to return home.) This film was made in a time when all this kind of stuff was LEGAL; now that says something about the real humanity in us all. Like it or hate it the truth shall always remain. We really don't understand thus confuse lust with love. I don't speak for us all but I dare say I do speak for the wise! FIVE STARS!