Pretty Baby

Set in 1917 New Orleans, Louis Malle’s “Pretty Baby” portrays a young girl’s formative years in a brothel, where the innocence of childhood collides with the harsh realities of adult life. The film’s stark, unflinching gaze captures the commodification of sexuality and the exploitation of youth, embodied in the protagonist’s fraught relationship with her prostitute mother. Through a lens that avoids melodrama, Malle crafts a portrait of a city teeming with vice and desire, where the line between virtue and depravity is perilously thin.