Cuties Review – A Controversial, Tough Watch

Cuties is a coming-of-age drama by Maïmouna Doucouré making her directorial debut. It’s an uncomfortable story that takes unflinching aim at the pressures of growing up, caught between tradition and depravity where ever comfort is sought. A controversy has swarmed around this film that it is an endorsement of pedophilia, due almost entirely to the massive misfires of Netflix marketing the picture. Yet the film itself is one that condemns the very sexualization others accuse it of showcasing. It’s a picture that doesn’t pretend 11-year-old girls are somehow blissfully unaware of such sexual dancing when they have technology that can instantly give them access to all of it.

Seeking Attention

Amy is a Senegal immigrant living in the projects of Paris. She lives in an apartment with two younger siblings and a mother trapped by tradition. Her father is off acquiring a second wife, against her mother’s wishes. Amy’s aunt stresses to her the importance of her culture which by her perspective seems harsh and intimidating, frightening enough for any pre-teen to flee in fear.

Seeking comfort elsewhere, she tries to fit in with the cool girls at school. She follows them around to discover they’re a dance group who engages in provocative dance routines, copied off social media. Intrigued by something so freeing, Amy finds her way into the group. And to stay in that group, she recommends they take their suggestive dancing to the ultimate extreme. And since so much of the media they consume stresses such sexualization, the rest of the girls go along with her ideas of butt jutting and tongue twirling.

Amy’s Struggle

Amy is essentially caught between two worlds where she can’t quite find herself. Her home life is chaotic and lacking to the point where nobody will recognize her as anything more than a mouth to feed or a woman to wed. It’s what initially brings her into the graces of one of the Cuties girls in her apartment complex, also suffering from a lack of parental attention and love. This sort of home life not only makes Amy fearful of her future but nihilistic about everything within her home.

Amy finds comfort in dancing but it’s not a genuine sense of self. It’s a state of rebellion, a plea to be seen as more. In the initial showcases of her dance routine, she finds the moves eccentric and freeing. Later, when her mother and aunt try to discipline her, she convulses into her dance in a dark sense of desperate revolution. She wants to cope. She wants to matter. She wants to feel as though she is someone on the inside rather than someone looking in. And it’s a very difficult place to be.

The Controversy

Doucouré has stated in interviews that she was very keen to keep the girls and their parents in the loop about the type of film they were making. Although Doucouré admits that kids no doubt have a familiarity with the movements in the picture, she additionally had a child psychologist work alongside her to make sure she was accurately portraying adolescence. Her inspiration for the picture was with her dismay of 11-year-old girls already engaging in such wildly suggestive dancing and she wanted to highlight how much of a problem this is.

Doucouré shoots the many dance sequences with the unease of a male gaze, getting in disturbingly close to rub our noses in this adolescence growing up too fast. We’re forced to watch such depravity play out without holding anything back. This is where the film becomes troubling problematic in how far it goes to gross us out. How far is too far to take this dancing that it plays more into pedophilia than it does condemning it? Personally, some of this comes across in a few scenes and is lost in others where Amy’s emotions in her soundtrack and the discomfort within the camera clash.

No Easy Route

I’ve heard a few workarounds suggested for Doucouné’s film. One suggestion was that she goes for animation instead of live-action to avoid sexualizing little girls. Let’s be honest though; the pearl-clutchers would spring on this as animated child porn considering the horror Cuties wants us to see. Another suggestion is to higher older actors but not only does this create scrutiny of how old do you go, it may not make the message clear and bring about criticism of the girls not looking their age and losing the message.

Finally, there’s the suggestion of favoring a documentary instead to be more damning. There are two problems with this. First, if she shot in the same way she does with the narrative, it would be under the same criticism it is now. Second, how far does one think a documentary can go in showcasing how these kids retreat to the internet for comfort and resort to such questionable actions for comfort? There a certain personal and quiet turmoil that Cuties evoke I’m not sure a documentary could showcase.

The Condemnation

A bigger question needs to be asked though that if we condemn Cuties, why do we not condemn reality shows like Dance Moms? What has Dance Moms done differently that it’s gone on for several seasons with nary the same fuss? The reasoning I believe is in the framing. Dance Moms is meant to be catharsis, blaming the parents for these problems and little else. One can watch an episode, feel good they’re not that awful, and then forget about the issue, returning to the show when you want some schadenfreude.

This film, however, never gives us an easy target, despite containing several to latch onto for quick blame. There’s a greater societal concern about how girls proceed down this route. And rather than explore that topic through a film such as this, the social media campaign has decided to shoot the messenger. The act of canceling Netflix to this degree, especially if you haven’t seen the film, is to virtue signal more than take action. The sexualization of children will not end because you canceled a movie. It will only lie dormant until the next take on the topic, fictional or non-fictional, if not taken seriously past the hashtags and memes.

Conclusion: Cuties

This is a troubling film, to say the least, in how it is deeply uncomfortable and questionable to several degrees, both intentional and unintentional. The ultimate message of the picture is that kids should remain kids for a bit longer and in terms of cautionary tales for youth, Cuties softens up a bit too much by the final shot. That being said, the film does the parts that make us deeply horrified at the state of girls growing up in such a society that seems to push them aside or forget about them, only giving them attention when they fulfill some cultural tradition or beg for it through provocative displays. Hopefully, the many girls growing up can find that comfortable place of individuality, for however fleeting that time may be.

What did you think of Cuties? Was it controversial? How does it stack up against Mighty Oak? Let us know in the comments below.