Pretty Baby is best revisited through the lens of its star. We look back at the child prostitution film using Brooke Shields' college thesis.
, “in actuality, the substance has a rich and inescapable incense smell that spreads throughout all areas and permeates all materials.” It’s a rare sense memory in an otherwise astute academic analysis, and it reminds us that Shields is far more an expert than she lets on. Her thesis, with the appropriately jargoned title
Brooke’s paper is fascinated by this murky cinematic journey into what we now call adolescence, which she sees as a theme across Malle’s oeuvre. It’s a well-thought-out, sometimes even poetic argument for reading Malle as a cinematic auteur who “creates a panoramic view of a situation that enables the spectator to reach his own conclusions,” not as a provocateur but as an artist exploring rites of passage throughout his work and career.
Filming the narrative in chronological order allowed her to retain a logical progression in her mind. She remembers “beginning with the first scene of the movie on the first day of filming and ending with the last sequence during the last week of filming.” This unimpeded march through time allowed Brooke and Violet to age simultaneously. She adds:
And we should, too. Brooke Shields’ performance as Violet is astoundingly complex and grounded for a young actress. She is as free from impediments as she claims, conveying a frustrated childishness and mischievous naivete. Yet, importantly, you can also see the young girl who has been working for as long as she can remember.
America frequently saw photographs of Brooke Shields. But Violet’s final photo for Bellocq, her photographer-husband-father, has her uncomfortably reclining fully nude on a chaise, which rightly provoked some responses. When it comes time to address the scene that seemed to give people license to harass and chastise Brooke across international talk shows, as made explicitly clear in, she begins like a scholar.
Louis Malle “places his characters in social soil,” Shields writes. As a sort of anthropologist abroad in America, the Malle of Shields’ thesis is heavily interested in stories about the ambiguities of human life through a film form defined by “open structures containing propositions and interrogations.” Malle’s films produce more questions than answers, and on the subject of child sexual exploitation, people like to feel sure.
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