Maison close
Paris, 1871. This is a story of the women trapped in a luxury brothel, 'Paradise'. The very young Rose came to Paris in search of her mother, former prostitute. She is trapped and forced to enroll in Paradise. Vera is 35 years. She knows that the end of her career as a prostitute is near. She is betting everything on the Baron Du Plessis, her main client, and the only one able to redeem her debt. Hortense is the owner of Paradise. She must take care of her girls and resist pressure from a suburban thug who is charging her money.
Episodes
The residents of the Paradise are forced to cohabitate with a band of Parisian thugs with highly questionable morals. Facing grave financial difficulties, the brothel must also survive the rise to power of a royalist chief commissioner who marks the return of a Moral Order.
Chief Commissioner Torcy, constantly looking to unseat Mosca from his throne at the Paradise, and suspicious of Mosca’s involvement in a major burglary, sends Commissioner Angélus to the brothel to make inquiries. But none of the girls are willing to talk. Meanwhile, Hortense detests Mosca’s presence in her territory and yearns to denounce him.
Torcy has enough on Hortense to put pressure on her and comes to arrest the Queen of the Paradise. In exchange for her freedom, she agrees to work with the Moral Order, Mosca, for his part, takes interest in a group street prostitutes who are all alone after the death of their pimp, especially once he meets a procurer looking for girls to feed a pipeline to Buenos Aires.
Despite being warned by Kertel, who fears retaliation by the Corentin Brothers, Mosca decides to keep the streetwalkers who were formerly under Corentin’s charge « on the pavement. » Valentine, who dreams of independence, is reunited with Rémi, a small-time criminal who lures her into a trap. Véra, meanwhile, decides to reveal everything to her daughter Jeanne.
The prefect reproaches Torcy for the increasing number of prostitutes in the streets and the amount of clean-up to be done immediately. His head is on the chopping block. Not wanting to be outdone by Mosca, the vicious master of the Pigalle streets, known as The Butcher, forces his way into the Paradise, holding the girls hostage.
The prefect demands that Torcy restore calm to the streets of Paris, and suggests he find some common ground with Mosca. Thus Torcy proposes to Mosca that he protect the peace at the Paradise and even take control over the streets. Véra wants Jeanne to believe that she was born out of love and that her father was killed in a duel.
Mosca and Rose get lost in a world of drugs and sex. So Kertel takes matters into his own hands with the help of Bak. Angéle contracts syphilis but the women of the Paradise refuse to report it and instead decide to treat her on site. Having no idea that Jeanne has been seeing Bak, Véra searches for a furnished apartment to satisfy her daughter’s desire for independence.
Torcy oversees the faithful’s donations to the Sacred Heart, which add up to a tidy sum. Mosca jumps at the opportunity to strike a fatal blow to the chief commissioner and replenish his coffers at the same time. Meanwhile, the women of the Paradise are worried that Kertel and Bak are trying to overthrow Mosca for control of the streets.
