The Perils of Pauline

Pauline Marvin wants to live before she settles. That's her crime in 1914 - wanting to taste the world before some man bottles her up in domesticity. Her adopted father, Stanford, lies dying, the great motor industry magnate reviewing his legacy while his children orbit each other with unspoken longing. But in the shadows lurks Owen, Stanford's secretary - a man whose drug dependency has rotted his integrity into something dangerous and calculating. When Pauline's hunger for experience collides with Owen's manipulations, the stage is set for old-fashioned melodrama: where desires curdle into peril, where a young woman's independence makes her a target, and where the only way out is through. It's a period piece that captures a transitional moment - when women began to test their cages, when old money met new industry, and when the era of silent film serials gave us imperiled heroines fighting against fate.