Cuties, Netflix review: a provocative powder-keg for an age terrified of child sexuality
4/5
Forget the moral panic – Netflix’s controversial French import is disturbing and risqué because that’s exactly what it aims to be
The tricky line between marketing and exploitation caused a ruckus in the case of Cuties, a wild feature debut from French-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré. It won the directing award at Sundance before being snapped up by Netflix. Then a poster happened to it.
This was an image cribbed from the film’s most openly provocative sequence – the finale – which, out of context, made everyone see red. It showed four pre-teen girls striking “sexy” poses on a dance stage, wearing shiny crop tops, knee pads and booty shorts.
Netflix soon apologised for the poster, and switched to a different image of this quartet pouting to camera, but the damage was done. Doucouré received death threats on social media, and a petition to have the film banned has amassed over 340,000 signatures on change.org. Sight unseen – one can only presume – the originator of the latter Mary-Whitehouse-esque screed calls the film “disgusting”, “dangerous” and made “for the viewing pleasure of paedophiles”. The Turkish broadcasting watchdog RTÜK seems to have agreed, ordering the film’s removal from Netflix in that country.
But enough of the moral panic. No one involved in demonising this film has paused at any stage – or watched it – to consider that its very subject is the disturbing, premature sexualisation of young girls in French society. Doucouré is hardly sly with her theme: by the end, she goes all out to make us squirm.
Eleven-year-old Amy (Fathia Youssouf), a Senegalese Muslim, has recently moved to a Parisian housing estate with her mother (superb Maïmouna Gueye) and two younger brothers. Her father, who we never see, is about to take a second wife, and preparations for the dreaded wedding are underway. At school, a troupe of wannabe dancers called the “mignonnes” (“cuties”) catch Amy’s attention, but she feels too square and shy to fit in – at least until she pilfers a mobile phone from her uncle, and begins using it to take selfies, beautify herself and get tips from hip-hop twerking videos.
Doucouré is blatantly pushing buttons here – never more so than in the ever-more-eye-widening dance sequences, where Amy quickly graduates from the rookie in this crew to the one schooling them in risqué, finger-biting choreography. If the pageant finale of Little Miss Sunshine often springs to mind, she functions in the story as Alan Arkin to her own Abigail Breslin.
The other girls want to pass as 14 to attract boyfriends, and with Amy’s phone, they have worrying access to everything the internet can show. Their licentiousness starts to float free of strict plausibility. Amy borrows skimpy T-shirts from her brother, swipes cash and takes them all on shopping sprees. Their make-up budget starts to look enormous. Essentially, they’re aping the gang from Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, who were 16 going on 25. In letting this play out, Doucouré is underlining an obvious fantasy of pre-pubescence: to fast-forward towards being treated as desirable.
The film is more an experiment in chutzpah than a slice of social realism. As the girls mess about recklessly and rehearse their moves, their lack of any supervision is odd, if semi-explained by the distracted chaos of Amy’s household. But they also know how their immaturity gives them a treacherous power, as we see when a security guard tries to hustle them out for trespassing and they brand him as a child molester. These certainly aren’t your neighbourhood’s average polite children. They’re twerking terrors of the pavement.
Following some well-received shorts, Doucouré made this from a very personal place. The keenest parts explore the push/pull of her Muslim upbringing. Amy is acting out because of her father’s betrayal, and unwilling to follow her mother – who’s secretly devastated – down the path of demure submission to the patriarchy. Her rebellion is defiantly flaunting herself, and thanks to some brazen invites from the film’s camerawork, the routines she masterminds tend to make the male gaze curl up in horror.
This is powder-keg provocation in an age so terrified of child sexuality. Thanks to the furore, it has blown up just as much in Doucouré’s face. But the film’s first hour is top-notch for a debut. The child performances are electric. The range of emotion she gets from Youssouf – not just the jaw-dropping cosmetic transformations – mark her out as a magician with actors. Gang leader Angelica – quite the failure for nominative determinism, there – is played with almost Larry Clark-esque attitude by Médina El Aidi-Azouni, another brilliant find.
How Doucouré achieved her joyous last shot, I don’t quite know. Imperfect as it is, this film deserves to launch a career, not end one.
Date: September 10th, 2020 12:18 PM Author: Heritage American Finn
Lmao holy shit I clicked on the link anticipating being able to make a pedo face joke but this guy literally has the most blatant pedo physiognomy that I have ever seen
xo and a few other weirdo dissident pockets on the right have been saying this for years, and they’ll be proven right. a harder question is what comes after that. i’m not sure i have the imagination to think of anything more evil. i’m sure libs do though.
Date: September 10th, 2020 12:27 PM Author: Snowy hateful circlehead
Cuties” dramatizes what people of color and immigrants endure as a result of isolation and ghettoization, of not being represented culturally and politically—and of not being represented in French national mythology. Its underlying subject is the connection of personal identity to public identity—and the urgency of transforming the very notion of French identity, of changing the idea of who’s considered the representative face of France. That idea is brought to the fore in an extraordinary, brief, symbolic ending; it’s enough to give a right-winger a conniption.
As fuller clips from the film now circulate online, it is clear that those of us who criticized the movie actually understated the case. It is, if anything, way worse than we assumed and feared.
One scene features the 11-year-old girls gyrating and slapping each other on the butt as the camera zooms in for close ups. Another shows Amy in her underwear furiously thrusting her body as she lays on the floor. Again, the camera provides close ups. In another, the girls dance provocatively for two grown men, one of whom looks on with obvious satisfaction. In still another, Amy pulls down her pants, takes a picture of her crotch, and posts it online.
The penultimate scene which was featured on the original poster before Netflix changed it, is significantly more disturbing than the already disturbing image let on. The scene drags on for several minutes, the dancing is highly sexualized, and the camera, as always, zooms in for crotch shots and other close ups.
This is not a “commentary” on child sexual exploitation — it is child sexual exploitation, clear as day, in all its sadism.
Date: September 10th, 2020 2:23 PM Author: carnelian bat shit crazy generalized bond location
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
XO is failing to celebrate the diversity of the film that celebrates girls of color and instead focuses on the mere fact that it embraces an "alternative lifestyle" that remains the final frontier.*
*Before incest, but we'll get there soon enough. I mean, once pedos become accepted, does it matter anymore?
Date: September 10th, 2020 5:25 PM Author: adventurous wrinkle degenerate
not flame, I cancelled Netflix this past weekend because the Harry/Meghan shit was the last straw for me and I never really watched it any more anyways. I feel really really good about that decision right now.
Date: September 10th, 2020 5:45 PM Author: french area sex offender
I watched a few min holy fuck that was disgusting and really sick shit. like focused exclusively on sexualizing the kids and zooming in on their asses and shit. what the fuck - you could get arrested for this shit if it was on someones computer
Date: September 10th, 2020 6:09 PM Author: Vivacious iridescent ape school cafeteria
the point is that you assumed they didn't, and now you have to question that assumption. 8 year olds twerking is now "on the table." It's a possibility. The fact that we're even here is damning.
BREAKING: After days of silence following outrage over "Cuties," Netflix defends "Cuties," calling it a "social commentary against the sexualization of young children" an "award winning film" and "a powerful story."
Date: September 11th, 2020 9:11 AM Author: hideous up-to-no-good round eye
I am going to make a film with non-stop fucking of hot chicks with big boobies-- no holes barred (get it?). All races involved. The degradation of these women will be off the charts. What's that? No way, man, it is a commentary against the misogyny and exploitation of women.