The French actress Eva Ionesco mines her own scandalous past in her debut feature. Ionesco's mother, Franco-Romanian photographer Irina Ionesco, famously shot and sold erotic photography of her daughter at the age of five, initiating a queasy career that culminated in appearances in the Italian edition of Playboy at 11. Her story has already inspired Louis Malle's Pretty Baby, and Ionesco herself has spent much of her adult life dealing with the after-effects, repeatedly suing her mother for emotional distress.
In this fictional telling, Ionesco's mother is played by a peroxided, full-diva mode Isabelle Huppert, and much of the film revolves around the love-hate dynamic young Ionesco had with this glamorous, narcissistic figure. As cutting as she is about her mother, Ionesco does not shy away from a candid portrait of her younger self as a bratty, obnoxious teen (portrayed by newcomer Anamaria Vartolomei).