Set in , it focuses on a year-old girl being raised in a brothel in Storyville , the red-light district of New Orleans , by her prostitute mother. The film is based on the true account of a young girl who was sexually exploited by being forced into prostitution by her mother, a theme which was recounted in historian Al Rose's book Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District. The project marked Malle's first American film production, as his previous works had been produced in his native France.
Although the film itself was mostly praised by critics, it caused significant public outcry and media controversy due to its depiction of child sexual exploitation, as well as the nude and semi-nude scenes featuring Shields, who was 11 years old at the time of filming, and whose character was a child being abused by grown men. In , during the final months of legal prostitution in Storyville , the red-light district of New Orleans , Louisiana, Hattie is a prostitute working at an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine -addicted Madame Nell.
Hattie has given birth to a baby boy and has a year-old daughter, Violet, who lives in the house. When photographer Ernest Bellocq arrives with his camera, aiming to document the sex workers, Hattie and Violet are the only people awake at the time; Madame Nell agrees to let him photograph them after he offers to pay her. Bellocq becomes a fixture in the brothel, photographing the women, but mostly Hattie.
His photographic activities fascinate the precocious Violet, who believes the man is falling in love with her mother, something which, strangely, makes her jealous. Violet is a restless child, frustrated by the lengthy precision of early photography that one must endure to compose and take photographs. Nell decides that Violet is old enough for her virginity to be auctioned off.
After a bidding war between regulars, Violet is bought by an apparently "quiet" customer. Hattie, meanwhile, wants to escape her lifestyle, marrying a customer and leaving for St. Louis without Violet, whom her new husband believes to be her sister. Hattie promises to return for her daughter once she has settled in and explained everything to her new spouse.
