Talking Picture Tuesdays - Pretty Baby

Louis Malle's 'Pretty Baby' marked the debut of Brooke Shields's controversial acting career in 1978, when she was just twelve years old. The film was set in the red-light district of New Orleans in 1917, where Shields played Violet Nell, who was growing up in a brothel with her prostitute mother, played by Susan Sarandon. Violet was very observant of all the activities that took place in the whorehouse, so that when the time came for her virginity to be auctioned off between the brothel's clients, she was almost excited to get her "career" started. Violet falls in love with a photographer named Bellocq and eventually marries him after her mother abandoned her to move to St. Louis. 'Pretty Baby' was particularly controversial at the time because there were several nude scenes and suggested sex scenes involving the pre-pubescent Shields, and the film even garnered accusations of child pornography. Nevertheless, Shields stole the screen in the way that she didn't try to draw sympathy from the audience, merely acting how anyone would if they were too young and uneducated to realize that there was anything wrong with the way that they had been brought up.

Talking Picture Tuesdays - Female Trouble

As you will come to know, Jane and I have a penchant for extremely disturbing movies, whether they be overly violent, sexual, psychologically exhilarating, or just plain weird. John Waters happens to be one of my favourite directors because as an extremely disturbed man himself his movies celebrate all of these themes. The movie of the day is his "Female Trouble" from 1974, which stars the lovely Divine playing Dawn Davenport. Divine was born Harris Glen Milstead (yes, a man), and although he played the female 'Divine' in many of John Waters's movies, he considered himself a 'character actor' and not trans-gender or transsexual. Divine was the main character in Waters's cult classic 'Pink Flamingos' and he plays a man and a woman in 'Hairspray', his last film before his death in 1988. Elizabeth Taylor was his idol, and he once said, "All my life I wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor. Now Elizabeth Taylor looks like me." The character of Ursula in the Little Mermaid was based on Divine.




'Female Trouble' was highly entertaining, but not for those who are easily offended. It begins with Divine as a high school student, who resents her parents for buying her practical flat shoes for Christmas instead of the "cha-cha" heels she had asked for. She runs away from home, gets raped while hitchhiking, and becomes pregnant. It skips to a few years later when she her daughter is six years old, and Divine is becoming a criminal after meeting a photographer duo who want to take pictures of her committing illegal acts. They promise her a career of glamorous modelling and rave about her beauty so that Divine becomes completely obsessed with her appearance. I won't spoil the ending of what is ultimately Divine's fate, so watch it and let us know what you thought!