Provocative
Ted Whitehead
Pretty Baby (Ritz) Scum (Prince Charles) Hard on the heels of the report recommendjag the abolition of the age of consent comes Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (X) a film about child prostitution in New Orleans (and also this week, but previewed too late for this notice, Home Before Midnight, about a schoolgirl's love affair). Child sexuality is one of the few subjects that can still he relied upon to shock the bourgeoisie, as It illustrated by the prolonged delay in getting Malle's film exhibited here. I suppose it is a nuisance that nature has Made a mess of the timetable of human development pment, granting the blessing of lo sexu ng before society is ready to grant the blessing of marriage. Malle seems deter mined to remind us of this discrepancy as his Young heroine Violet (Brooke Shields), (laughter of a prostitute, Hattie (Susan Sarandon), grows up witnessing the vol UPtuons excitements of a turn-of-thecentury brothel and waits impatiently for the time when she can join in the fun. At last the big day arrives, when she's 12, a, lid Hattie advises her: `Dbn't act like you know it all — act innocent, they like that.' Paraded on a platter before the assembled clients and auctioned off for 400 dollars, the Young virgin promptly forgets mummy's advice and tells her purchaser: 'I can feel the steam inside me right through my dress.' all plays on conventional moral expectations as the scream of punctured maiden hood is followed by the sight of the middleaged client slipping guiltily away and of the girl's white body lying prostrate and motionless on the bed — only for Violet to Jump up triumphantly, laughing and crying over her initiation. Malle illustrates the conflict between Violets aggressive sexuality and her con tinuing childishness, as she first refuses to leave the brothel with her mother, who is rnarryi ng a client; and then later, after the brothel has been closed and she herself has married, cheerfully leaves her husband at the first summons to join her family. The husband is a photographer who seems obsessed by the lush beauty of the halfdraped prostitutes, and I am afraid that the director seems to share his finitude in his approach to his subject. Perhaps he felt that the subject was so provocative that it had to be treated with glossy, sensuous imagery and Moonlight Bay music but the pervasive romanticism and the psychological shallowness left me feeling bored long before the end.
Scum (X) is a film version of Roy Minton's play about life in a government borstal, which was banned by the BBC. The authorities apparently believed that though the events of the play might have occurred, they would not all have occurred in the one establishment. As the events include violent beatings, buggery, suicide, mass revolt and acts of bribery and corruption at every level of the operation, it is not particularly reassuring to know that they are distributed through the system rather than concentrated. Alan Clarke's direction is hard, clear and utterly uncompromising, and the performances of his largely unfamiliar cast are so authentic and convincing as to make one flinch. The producers, Davina Belling and Clive Parsons, should be congratulated for their courage in exposing what obviously many people do not wish to see; it certainly should be seen.
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