At the age of 16, Martha Coolidge was raped by a fellow student. This experience, and in particular the emotions and rhetoric in its aftermath, forms the starting point for this Brechtian film, in which Coolidge re-enacts the event and places the creative process in the foreground.

From the beginning, there is a clear distinction between the fictional scenes, in which the acting is deliberately slightly affected, and the documentary sequences, in which the actors discuss their roles and their own experiences. This produces a dialectical film about the gray areas of adolescent sex, and the web of insecurity, ignorance, privilege and performance pressure that can so easily turn into a toxic cocktail.

Coolidge further complicates matters in the intense rehearsal scenes, in which it is often not clear to the viewer what agreements have been made and whether they are being adhered to. Thus, these scenes themselves also enter gray areas, confronting the viewer with the ease with which boundaries can be blurred, shifted and crossed when they are not clearly drawn.

Not a Pretty Picture has been restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. Funding was provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.