Niña bonita

Beautifully photographed and sumptuous to watch. Brooke Shields, with that famous saucy and spirited personality, is gorgeous. I wasn't bothered by the nudity. I wasn't bothered by the story either and I feel the movie accurately portrayed a different time with a quite different moral tone than the one we live with today. But, hey, stories are just stories. Actually, I think the main reason this movie works is because it comes across as honest, it feels like being in another place and another time, and it's lovely to see.

"Pretty Baby" (1978): Usually, when a controversial film comes out, the hubbub dies off in a few weeks. Later, people wonder why anyone got upset at all. In this case, I think the opposite is the case. There WAS some buzz about "Pretty Baby" when it premiered in 1978, but NOW? People would be killing the director, photographer, and screen writers in the names of Decency & Righteousness. It's a crazy world. Photographed by Sven Nykvist (Ingmar Bergman's photographer), Louis Malle directed this Polly Platt screenplay about the real life New Orleans documentary photographer E.J. Bellocq. He spent much of his career photographing those no one else would – the prostitutes of N.O. - and eventually became involved with a young girl (Brooke Shields) raised by her prostitute single mother (Susan Sarandon), to be a prostitute herself. There's an interesting push/pull to this film. It is SO beautifully photographed, and the prostitutes shown SO human, there is much warmth in the scenes, yet the facts remain difficult to accept – life was what it was, and they did what they had to do to survive in the turn-of-the-century South. This is NOT a story of tragedy (except in personal terms that have nothing to do with the profession). Most everyone went about their days in matter-of-fact acceptance of their "station" in life, and did not get ulcers. They had a roof, decent money, good food, servants, and a place to raise their "accident" children. "Pretty Baby" asks you to step outside your contemporary world and standards, and try, just for two hours, to see another point of view. It's an interesting challenge…perhaps more now than even a mere 30 years ago.

Set during the final weeks of legal prostitution in Storyville, New Orleans, the whorehouse ran by the ageing Madame Nell (Frances Faye) is quietly coming to an end. This is unknown to the employees, who are going about their work and earning their money. Ernest Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a real-life photographer who took the famous Storyville prostitute portraits, arrives and takes an special interest in the beautiful Hattie (Susan Sarandon), and her 12-year old daughter Violet (Brooke Shields). Violet is a confident, bratty and adventurous girl who is groomed to be the star attraction at the brothel by Hattie and Madame Nell. As the men queue up for Violet, Bellocq also becomes enamoured with her, and the two start a strange love affair.

For such a monstrously ugly subject, Pretty Baby is a strikingly beautiful film. The idea of child prostitution is repulsive but was a very real thing back in the 1917-era (and obviously still exists today under a much more secretive veil). It takes a very brave director to even consider tackling such a subject, and then to do it with such elegance, truth and respect. The both cosy and dank whorehouse pulses with life and realism, to the point where it feels like the film was actually filmed in the time. Minor details such as the peeling paint on the window ledges and the layers of dust on the bookshelves adds an authenticity rarely seen.

The film was extremely controversial in its day (and would still be if it was released today) for its full-frontal nudity of a 12-year old Brooke Shields. It is undoubtedly uncomfortable to watch at times, but as hard as it is to say, it is necessary to truly see who she is, and what the men want her for, which makes the whole thing even more horrific and wrong. The scene where she is carried into a room and flaunted as a virgin to rich, cigar-smoking older men who start a bidding war to take her virginity, left me cold. It is a truly powerful scene, and when we later see her naked in her youth, all fragile and undeveloped, it almost made me sick.

Shields, who is clearly not the most talented actress in the world, is genuinely brilliant here. Full of natural beauty and swaggering maturity, her character is a complex mixture of the naive, the immature, and the wise-beyond-her-years. She seems more than ready, and eager to start work, and has the natural ability to wrap a man around her little finger. Years growing up in a brothel has seemingly left her unable to feel. And when she begins her relationship with Bellocq, it is unclear if she truly loves him, or she is simply acting to get the life she desires. If you can stomach the taboo subject matter, this is a fascinating film, rich with great acting, complex characters and a smart script, handled with an individuality and grace by the great Louis Malle.

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How sad this movie was, for all of the characters involved. I thought Brooke Shields was excellent as a pre-pubescent nymphette, as Nabakov would say. And I think her acting verged on the almost absurd because she was caught somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Poor Violet, caught tragically between two worlds. But this film and its nudity, were far from disturbing. Louis Malle made the whole piece a sort of decadent, decaying artwork, which is exactly what New Orleans is. You can almost smell and touch the oak trees and plants that are overtaking Bellocq's house. I think that the key to this film is that one must watch it objectively instead of subjectively. The movie is a reflection of the Storyville era of New Orleans. If Malle had covered Shields, it would have been like Michelangelo being forced to cover his Sybils in the chapel; Something beautiful and poignant would have been lost. Watch this movie for a glimpse into the past of New Orleans, but don't forget to read the back of the box before you rent. It IS about prostitution.

Louis Malle did an amazing job of portraying the Storyville life (red light district), and the lives of the women caught up in it. He gets the finest work out of his cast, and demonstrates what it makes him a master filmmaker: not someone who just makes movies to impress other directors, but someone who touches an audience.

He begins and ends the film with the camera slowly closing in on the wide eyes of its child-lead, making you wonder how her life will proceed, having seen what she's seen. It makes you wonder whether marriage, in those times, was any different for a woman than prostitution. Mostly, you have to wonder how Violet could adapt to normal life, with the strange perspective she's had on it so far.

The petulance and "spoiled"ness described in the review below, are merely her childishness, to illustrate that she is an ordinary child in bizarre circumstances. For those not carried away by Shields' appearance, this made the film very poignant -- this child doesn't even know that there is any other way to live.

And the viewer can put away concerns for Shields herself: the nude scenes were done by a body-double, despite what is listed in the "trivia" section of this listing. (I know someone who later worked with the body double.)