Pretty Baby

Pretty Baby is set in New Orleans in 1917, in the final months before prostitution was made illegal in the city's red-light district. Hattie works at an elegant brothel run by Madame Nell, and her twelve-year-old daughter Violet lives there among the women and their clients. When the photographer Ernest J. Bellocq visits to take pictures of Hattie, Violet becomes fascinated by him. Nell puts the girl's virginity up for auction, and Hattie, having accepted a suitor's marriage proposal, leaves for St. Louis without her daughter, passing Violet off as her younger sister. Violet is left behind in the house.

Louis Malle directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by Polly Platt. It was the ninth of the thirteen features Malle directed, following Black Moon and preceding Atlantic City. Brooke Shields plays Violet, with Keith Carradine as Bellocq, Susan Sarandon as Hattie, Frances Faye as Nell, Antonio Fargas as Professor and Matthew Anton as Red Top, among a credited cast of twenty-nine. The production, made in the United States and France, cost about four million dollars and took roughly twelve million worldwide.

On TMDB the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from 438 votes, indicating a generally favourable response from those users.