A 12-year-old Brooke Shields stars as Violet in this controversial Louis Malle film. It's 1917, and Violet lives in the red-light district of New Orleans known as Storyville with her prostitute mother (Susan Sarandon). On the eve of her 12th birthday, when she'll soon join her mother in life's oldest profession, she meets photographer Ernest Bellocq (Keith Carradine), whom she aspires to marry despite the fact that he's much older.