“I said, certified freak. Seven days a week. Wet ass pussy. Make that pull-out game weak, woo. Yeah, you fucking with some wet ass pussy. Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet ass pussy. Give me everything you got for this wet ass pussy” – WAP (Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion)
Cuties is a 2020 coming of age drama directed by Maïmouna Doucouré and distributed by Netflix. It is also the subject of an extremely controversial marketing campaign that has branded the film as child pornography, and currently the spearhead for the latest #CancelNetflix campaign due to its supposedly exploitative nature. I first heard about the film shortly after the poster was released (and way before the film was released for context) when some friends on social media shared it and slated the film for essentially giving paedophiles a free pass and justifying paedophilia as a sexual orientation...despite the film not being out so they couldn’t have seen it to know this.
So, the rational part of me decided that I simply had to see this film before I could draw any kind of conclusion on it, because if history has taught me anything it’s that jumping on a bandwagon can often lead to bad places if you’re not really sure why you joined in the first place. So, get your pitchforks and torches ready because I’ve got my running shoes laced up and ready to go when I say that Cuties is actually a pretty good film and you should probably watch it.
I am going to be completely no holds barred on spoilers in this review so if you have any desire to see the film already, I will say now that I highly recommend it because there’s a lot to digest and unpack. It’s a significantly more complex film both thematically and emotionally than I expected, and it really affected me, also in ways I’ve never been affected by a film before. It’s well-written, well-directed, well-acted, and overall, just a very well-made film. It’s also an excellent commentary on the sexual exploitation of women, particularly young women; and a scathing critique of Islam and the expectations of women in that setting, something I did not expect in the slightest. On that note, away I go.
Cuties is a 2020 coming of age drama directed by Maïmouna Doucouré and distributed by Netflix. It is also the subject of an extremely controversial marketing campaign that has branded the film as child pornography, and currently the spearhead for the latest #CancelNetflix campaign due to its supposedly exploitative nature. I first heard about the film shortly after the poster was released (and way before the film was released for context) when some friends on social media shared it and slated the film for essentially giving paedophiles a free pass and justifying paedophilia as a sexual orientation...despite the film not being out so they couldn’t have seen it to know this.
So, the rational part of me decided that I simply had to see this film before I could draw any kind of conclusion on it, because if history has taught me anything it’s that jumping on a bandwagon can often lead to bad places if you’re not really sure why you joined in the first place. So, get your pitchforks and torches ready because I’ve got my running shoes laced up and ready to go when I say that Cuties is actually a pretty good film and you should probably watch it.
I am going to be completely no holds barred on spoilers in this review so if you have any desire to see the film already, I will say now that I highly recommend it because there’s a lot to digest and unpack. It’s a significantly more complex film both thematically and emotionally than I expected, and it really affected me, also in ways I’ve never been affected by a film before. It’s well-written, well-directed, well-acted, and overall, just a very well-made film. It’s also an excellent commentary on the sexual exploitation of women, particularly young women; and a scathing critique of Islam and the expectations of women in that setting, something I did not expect in the slightest. On that note, away I go.
First up I am going to address the elephant in the room. Yes, Cuties is an exploitative film, but it is not exploitative in the way I have seen people claiming. The poster does an absolutely awful job of selling what this film is about, because it implies it’s a hyper sexualised version of Step Up starring kids. But in reality, it’s more like a cross between 2010’s psychological thriller Black Swan, and 2006’s dramady Little Miss Sunshine. Does the film sexually glamourise pre-teen girls? Yes; In fact, it does it a little too well. Take that as a positive or negative as you like but it certainly reinforces the message the film is going for. What message is that? Well it’s certainly not that paedophilia is acceptable, for all of you social media armchair warriors out there. The message is that being a woman is hard; being a Muslim woman is even harder; and being a Muslim girl on the cusp of adolescence, whilst growing up in a western society that idolises sexuality is even harder than that.
Amy is an 11-year-old Senegalese-French girl who lives in France with her mother and brother. Her father is currently in Senegal where he has become engaged to another woman and the two will soon move to France where they will be married and live in the family home. Amy’s mother is understandably broken by this, however the social pressures from the Muslim community, her aunt in particular, insist that she pull herself together, welcome the new woman into her house, and wish her husband and her a long and happy life together. Witnessing how much this affects her mother, Amy befriends one of her neighbours, Angelica, and begins to work her way into her friendship group at school. Angelica and her friends wear revealing clothing, flirt with boys who are significantly older than them, and are sexually inquisitive. They are entering a time in their lives where their bodies are changing, and they want to understand why, as well as show off their bodies similarly to how their idols like Kim Kardashian do.
The girls are also a dance group called the Cuties, they learn routines from their favourite pop singers on Youtube and recreate their sexually charged dances in an attempt to enter a local dance competition and beat a group of older girls. When Amy offers to fill in when one of the girls is kicked out of the group, she advocates for the dances to be even raunchier in an attempt to gain popularity amongst their peers and stand out against their older rivals.
It’s extremely unusual to be forced to watch something you’re uncomfortable with. Obviously, I could stop the film at any time, but yet at the same time I simply couldn’t stop watching. What the film wants you to grapple with, is how you are contributing to the sexual exploitation of children, by your consumption of media such as music videos and even this film. It’s very meta in that sense, but why it also undoubtably succeeds in achieving what it sets out to do.
I opened this review with a quote from the recently released WAP by Cardi B because I feel like this is a near perfectly timed example of exactly the issue this film seeks to tackle. There are plenty of people, myself included, who will advocate for women to do whatever they want with their bodies and if that includes sexy dancing in songs that are overtly sexual in nature then so be it. But at what point do we need to accept responsibility for that media also being consumed by our children, who do not fully understand both sides of sex (the glamourous side portrayed in these videos, and the more realistic side of sexual health, contraception, and sexual assault) and misinterpret this glamourisation as the correct way to behave in order to be liked and to be popular? I will certainly not deny that I have been aroused by music videos by artists like Ariana Grande, because that is how they are designed, that is the purpose they serve. To glamourise and eroticise. But what damage is that doing to a pre-teen girl who has just got her first period? This is what Cuties seeks to address.
Amy is an 11-year-old Senegalese-French girl who lives in France with her mother and brother. Her father is currently in Senegal where he has become engaged to another woman and the two will soon move to France where they will be married and live in the family home. Amy’s mother is understandably broken by this, however the social pressures from the Muslim community, her aunt in particular, insist that she pull herself together, welcome the new woman into her house, and wish her husband and her a long and happy life together. Witnessing how much this affects her mother, Amy befriends one of her neighbours, Angelica, and begins to work her way into her friendship group at school. Angelica and her friends wear revealing clothing, flirt with boys who are significantly older than them, and are sexually inquisitive. They are entering a time in their lives where their bodies are changing, and they want to understand why, as well as show off their bodies similarly to how their idols like Kim Kardashian do.
The girls are also a dance group called the Cuties, they learn routines from their favourite pop singers on Youtube and recreate their sexually charged dances in an attempt to enter a local dance competition and beat a group of older girls. When Amy offers to fill in when one of the girls is kicked out of the group, she advocates for the dances to be even raunchier in an attempt to gain popularity amongst their peers and stand out against their older rivals.
It’s extremely unusual to be forced to watch something you’re uncomfortable with. Obviously, I could stop the film at any time, but yet at the same time I simply couldn’t stop watching. What the film wants you to grapple with, is how you are contributing to the sexual exploitation of children, by your consumption of media such as music videos and even this film. It’s very meta in that sense, but why it also undoubtably succeeds in achieving what it sets out to do.
I opened this review with a quote from the recently released WAP by Cardi B because I feel like this is a near perfectly timed example of exactly the issue this film seeks to tackle. There are plenty of people, myself included, who will advocate for women to do whatever they want with their bodies and if that includes sexy dancing in songs that are overtly sexual in nature then so be it. But at what point do we need to accept responsibility for that media also being consumed by our children, who do not fully understand both sides of sex (the glamourous side portrayed in these videos, and the more realistic side of sexual health, contraception, and sexual assault) and misinterpret this glamourisation as the correct way to behave in order to be liked and to be popular? I will certainly not deny that I have been aroused by music videos by artists like Ariana Grande, because that is how they are designed, that is the purpose they serve. To glamourise and eroticise. But what damage is that doing to a pre-teen girl who has just got her first period? This is what Cuties seeks to address.
The few dance scenes that are in the film are firstly, incredibly well shot (well done cinematographer, nice to see dance being filmed properly in film for a change), and secondly designed to look as close to the real thing as possible. That means you’re going to watch a whole lot of 11-year-old girls gyrating, twerking, and humping the floor. You know what the worst thing is, it does look sexy. Swap those young girls out for a group of women like Little Mix and nobody would bat an eyelid, in fact they would be showered with praise for empowering females with sexuality, and it would be labelled hottest music video of the year.
Cuties does not play this as a good thing of course. The girls start receiving unwanted sexual attention from boys, including a classmate sexually assaulting Amy in class because of a picture she posted online (something I will address later). Once they reach the final for the dance competition the sexualisation is pushed through the roof, where they are touching themselves as they dance and seemingly inviting the audience to touch them too. This is the only point in the film where you are shown visible disgust from the people watching the dance competition, and suddenly there is a complete tonal shift from it being a hot and sexy dance routine to something dirty and wildly inappropriate. As a dancer myself, I have seen multiple performances from pre-teens that are just as sexualised as routines performed by people that were my own age (late teens/early twenties) and it always disturbed me because of how ok people were with it. I even had a friend explain to me that it was ok, because we were doing the same thing. That because we in our routine were acting all sexy, and that it was a family performance, that therefore the kids could do it too. This seemed the general consensus of people around me which I never understood. So, when the audience reaction to this performance in the film was of disgust, whilst it was certainly much raunchier than anything I’d seen on stage, I have to say I was surprised the film actually called itself out. I was half expecting the audience to be ok with it because the older dancers were doing the same thing, because that’s what I had been conditioned to believe during my performing days.
I want to return to this broken family dynamic that the film sets up. Amy’s great aunt is perhaps the most damaging woman in Amy’s life and she represents Amy’s heritage in Islam. The aunt is often seen telling women of her communion that they must be entirely subservient to their husbands. That a woman’s job is to do everything a man wants her to do, and then when she dies, she will be able to spend eternity continuing to serve men in the afterlife. She also berates Amy when Amy has her first period in front of her. The conversation starts off with the aunt talking about how Amy is dressing like a whore and she is an embarrassment to her and her mother, but then when the aunt notices blood on Amy’s jeans around the crotch she then swiftly changes the conversation to how Amy will soon be married off to a man to do whatever he wants to do with her and she will give him lots of children and that will be her entire life. The film portrays this side of Islam with unflinching hatred. The director herself came from a Muslin family and experienced these exact pressures she explores in the film, so you could consider the story semi-autobiographical in that sense. The attitude Amy’s great aunt has towards how women should act and be treated, is arguably just as bad as how Amy reacts to it by hyper-sexualising herself.
Amy’s mother is seeing Amy’s rebellious side and acknowledging it as a good thing in the sense that she is escaping the prison that she is currently being held in. Whilst it’s certainly never stated that what Amy s doing is good, her mother appears to be happy that’s he won’t endure the same misery she is currently going through. With her faith wavering due to her husband’s impending second marriage, she is on the verge of running away from her family duties entirely. The final scene of the film sees Amy’s mum talk to her and essentially tell her daughter that she can do what she wants, because although it is too late for her to leave everything behind, Amy is still young enough to escape the Muslim life if she wants to.
There’s also a number of disturbing scenes that take place in Amy’s family’s apartment. She receives a dress as a gift from her father early on in the film, but every time she looks at it, it appears to be alive and in one scene it even begins to bleed profusely, symbolising how remaining a part of that life will literally kill her. You get the feeling that Amy is so uncomfortable with her home life, and so unwilling to become as miserable as her mother has, that she swings so hard in the other direction to being labelled a slut and a whore. There’s also a ghostly scene when Amy sees her father’s new bride to be and she is completely terrified of the woman.
Cuties does not play this as a good thing of course. The girls start receiving unwanted sexual attention from boys, including a classmate sexually assaulting Amy in class because of a picture she posted online (something I will address later). Once they reach the final for the dance competition the sexualisation is pushed through the roof, where they are touching themselves as they dance and seemingly inviting the audience to touch them too. This is the only point in the film where you are shown visible disgust from the people watching the dance competition, and suddenly there is a complete tonal shift from it being a hot and sexy dance routine to something dirty and wildly inappropriate. As a dancer myself, I have seen multiple performances from pre-teens that are just as sexualised as routines performed by people that were my own age (late teens/early twenties) and it always disturbed me because of how ok people were with it. I even had a friend explain to me that it was ok, because we were doing the same thing. That because we in our routine were acting all sexy, and that it was a family performance, that therefore the kids could do it too. This seemed the general consensus of people around me which I never understood. So, when the audience reaction to this performance in the film was of disgust, whilst it was certainly much raunchier than anything I’d seen on stage, I have to say I was surprised the film actually called itself out. I was half expecting the audience to be ok with it because the older dancers were doing the same thing, because that’s what I had been conditioned to believe during my performing days.
I want to return to this broken family dynamic that the film sets up. Amy’s great aunt is perhaps the most damaging woman in Amy’s life and she represents Amy’s heritage in Islam. The aunt is often seen telling women of her communion that they must be entirely subservient to their husbands. That a woman’s job is to do everything a man wants her to do, and then when she dies, she will be able to spend eternity continuing to serve men in the afterlife. She also berates Amy when Amy has her first period in front of her. The conversation starts off with the aunt talking about how Amy is dressing like a whore and she is an embarrassment to her and her mother, but then when the aunt notices blood on Amy’s jeans around the crotch she then swiftly changes the conversation to how Amy will soon be married off to a man to do whatever he wants to do with her and she will give him lots of children and that will be her entire life. The film portrays this side of Islam with unflinching hatred. The director herself came from a Muslin family and experienced these exact pressures she explores in the film, so you could consider the story semi-autobiographical in that sense. The attitude Amy’s great aunt has towards how women should act and be treated, is arguably just as bad as how Amy reacts to it by hyper-sexualising herself.
Amy’s mother is seeing Amy’s rebellious side and acknowledging it as a good thing in the sense that she is escaping the prison that she is currently being held in. Whilst it’s certainly never stated that what Amy s doing is good, her mother appears to be happy that’s he won’t endure the same misery she is currently going through. With her faith wavering due to her husband’s impending second marriage, she is on the verge of running away from her family duties entirely. The final scene of the film sees Amy’s mum talk to her and essentially tell her daughter that she can do what she wants, because although it is too late for her to leave everything behind, Amy is still young enough to escape the Muslim life if she wants to.
There’s also a number of disturbing scenes that take place in Amy’s family’s apartment. She receives a dress as a gift from her father early on in the film, but every time she looks at it, it appears to be alive and in one scene it even begins to bleed profusely, symbolising how remaining a part of that life will literally kill her. You get the feeling that Amy is so uncomfortable with her home life, and so unwilling to become as miserable as her mother has, that she swings so hard in the other direction to being labelled a slut and a whore. There’s also a ghostly scene when Amy sees her father’s new bride to be and she is completely terrified of the woman.
This brings me onto perhaps the most uncomfortable scene in the film, and the true tipping point of Amy’s character. Very early in the film she steals her cousins iPhone, which gives her access to Instagram and easy contact to her newly made friends. Later on, her cousin discovers she has stolen the phone he demands she give it back. Rather than simply hand the phone over, Amy begins to strip for him, believing that if she gratifies him sexually, she will be able to do whatever she wants. He stops her from doing this and she shuts herself in the bathroom with his phone where she proceeds to take a picture of her vagina and upload it to Instagram. Just to clarify, we do not see her vagina at all. This is after all not child pornography. But just the action in itself is a catalyst for a whole lot of bad things, and the true underpinning of Amy not realising where glamourous sexuality ends, and where sexual exploitation begins. The weird thing is Amy has been on a downward spiral the whole film in terms of stealing and acting violently towards her classmates, yet they seem almost acceptable in comparison to her sharing a picture of her body online...yet the only person who is being hurt by that picture is her. It’s odd seeing as how one of her least violent acts in the film is the one we have an issue with the most. There’s another example of this misunderstanding of the practicality of sex earlier on in the film where one of the girls from the cuties finds a condom on the ground and blows it up believing it to be a discarded balloon. The reaction from the rest of the girls is of complete disgust and fearing their friend has now contracted Cancer and AIDS by touching the condom and even placing it on her face and around her mouth. It’s a very bold statement to make considering just minutes earlier the girls had been watching porn on a smartphone and talking about wanting to do sexual acts with boys, yet when the practicality of it faces them, they are repulsed by it and simply fail to understand how sex functions as an act. They are informed by music videos and social media that sex is glamourous, but then when the reality of it hits them, they realise just how dirty it can be.
I should probably talk about the other aspects of the film for a little bit before I close this review off. For some reason the version I watched was dubbed in English, but I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be in French with subtitles. As a result, the dialogue was often a little weirdly delivered. Didn’t always tonally fit with the situation. Plus, the voice actors employed for all the younger girls are all very ‘Cali from the Valley’ and they sound way older than they should be. In the case of Amy this then doesn’t match the African accents they have given her family members, so it seems even weirder that amongst a family of Senegalese people Amy sounds American and she lives in France. It didn’t ruin the film, but I feel like personally I would have rather had the original French dialogue with subtitles like what is provided in the United States.
As previously mentioned, the cinematography is great, especially during the dance sequences. This is a problem I have with a lot of dance films, that it’s not shot in an interesting way and the cuts aren’t done in time with the movements and music very well. But Cuties takes a leaf out of music videos and manages to provide some of the best shot dance sequences in film I’ve seen in years.
I should probably talk about the other aspects of the film for a little bit before I close this review off. For some reason the version I watched was dubbed in English, but I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be in French with subtitles. As a result, the dialogue was often a little weirdly delivered. Didn’t always tonally fit with the situation. Plus, the voice actors employed for all the younger girls are all very ‘Cali from the Valley’ and they sound way older than they should be. In the case of Amy this then doesn’t match the African accents they have given her family members, so it seems even weirder that amongst a family of Senegalese people Amy sounds American and she lives in France. It didn’t ruin the film, but I feel like personally I would have rather had the original French dialogue with subtitles like what is provided in the United States.
As previously mentioned, the cinematography is great, especially during the dance sequences. This is a problem I have with a lot of dance films, that it’s not shot in an interesting way and the cuts aren’t done in time with the movements and music very well. But Cuties takes a leaf out of music videos and manages to provide some of the best shot dance sequences in film I’ve seen in years.
Overall, the film is fantastic. I highly recommend it in-case the last 2500 words haven’t proved that enough. I think many of the issues surrounding the film come from the frankly awful marketing material, and I feel that perhaps the film would have been better received if it had been a documentary. It may not have been able to have the same level of social commentary surrounding religion and women’s roles in society doing that, but the child exploitation angle would have been relatively easy to frame and perhaps even be more successful with audiences. But that brings me to the issue of whether people have a problem with the film because its fiction? Because these girls are actors and have been paid to do this as a performance. Going back to my earlier point of society needing to shoulder the responsibility for this hyper-sexualisation, Tik Tok has been huge this year and I have seen a whole lot of young girls dressed up in revealing outfits doing provocative dances. Yet people seem to be ok with seeing that because it’s the girl doing what she wants to do. But if she was getting paid for that would people have a problem because it’s then sexual exploitation? Again, I feel that this film proves social attitudes need to be adjusted before we can truly stand atop our moral high ground and claim whether something is child pornography, or simply a film pointing out how society is letting our children down. I’m not exempt from this; in fact, I would argue that 90% of us aren't. Though many of us aren't consciously contributing to the sexualisation of young people, we are often congratulating older people for gratuitous sexual expression without thinking how this will affect children. The name of the film also plays a great role in this, because we use the word cute to define something with a certain level of attractiveness. For instance, going back to Ariana Grande, her whole image is focused around cuteness, but we find that sexually attractive. We also use the term cute to define children that fit societal norms for attractiveness, whether that be their physical makeup, or their behaviour. We’re using the same word to describe an overtly sexual pop singer as we are to describe children. You see the problem?
The funny thing is the film is in opposition to the exact same thing its critics oppose, but it's simply the methods of execution that’s the difference. Where one is people saying this film shouldn’t exist because it exploits children, the other is attempting to lure you into a false sense of enjoying that exploitation only to make you realise just how wrong and disgusting the whole thing is. It’s a psychological trick I’ve seen done a few times surrounding violence, but I’ve never seen it done quite so effectively with sex as the focal point. Cuties is certainly bold in its message and wants to drive home this message of how wrong the whole thing is. Whether the methods it uses are acceptable or not is certainly up for debate, but the film has achieved what it set out to do and that’s get people talking about it. So, it’s worked right? For those of you who are saying the film is child pornography and normalises paedophilia, I suggest you actually do some research into a topic before you jump on a bandwagon, firstly because the film is none of the things you’re claiming it is; and secondly because stopping things being made because they handle sensitive subject matter is the exact way to make that subject matter even more dangerous because nobody wants to talk about it. Could the marketing have been handled more tastefully? Absolutely, in fact it was in other regions of the world. But that’s marketing that was not mandated by the film's creators, but instead by Netflix’s marketing team. The film itself I would argue has been handled with great care and is a conversation starter about why the subject matter is wrong, not a justification for anything it depicts.
The funny thing is the film is in opposition to the exact same thing its critics oppose, but it's simply the methods of execution that’s the difference. Where one is people saying this film shouldn’t exist because it exploits children, the other is attempting to lure you into a false sense of enjoying that exploitation only to make you realise just how wrong and disgusting the whole thing is. It’s a psychological trick I’ve seen done a few times surrounding violence, but I’ve never seen it done quite so effectively with sex as the focal point. Cuties is certainly bold in its message and wants to drive home this message of how wrong the whole thing is. Whether the methods it uses are acceptable or not is certainly up for debate, but the film has achieved what it set out to do and that’s get people talking about it. So, it’s worked right? For those of you who are saying the film is child pornography and normalises paedophilia, I suggest you actually do some research into a topic before you jump on a bandwagon, firstly because the film is none of the things you’re claiming it is; and secondly because stopping things being made because they handle sensitive subject matter is the exact way to make that subject matter even more dangerous because nobody wants to talk about it. Could the marketing have been handled more tastefully? Absolutely, in fact it was in other regions of the world. But that’s marketing that was not mandated by the film's creators, but instead by Netflix’s marketing team. The film itself I would argue has been handled with great care and is a conversation starter about why the subject matter is wrong, not a justification for anything it depicts.