User Reviews

I live under a rock, and so I was one of the last of my friends to see the highly controversial film "Cuties". I sat through one viewing, and I think that was all I needed to see.

I've honestly seen films on this sort of subject (being a girl on the cusp of womanhood) that have stylistically handled it better, such as the 2014 film "The Fits". "Cuties" is one of those French art films that pushes boundaries for "art" and shock value, constantly hitting us over the head with heavy-handed implications that female innocence in the digital age is dead. The girls in this film, not even in high school yet, curse like sailors and dress inappropriately, an awkward and painful spectacle for the viewer as we sit there watching the main character's slow downfall into competitive perversion. It's vulgar, it's shocking, and yet, by the time it's over, all I was thinking to myself was, "okay, that was REALLY creepy... what else is new?" And I say this because, in an era of TikTok, Instagram, children being given their own cell phone in preschool, iPads in classrooms, none of this sort of thing surprises me anymore. Maybe fifteen years ago the film would have left a bigger impact on me. Now, having been born in 1998 myself and having grown up with this same kind of pressure and exposure to sexuality as a female, I'm just desensitized to this type of thing. The problem with Cuties is that it's telling us something we already knew, all while proposing nothing that can be done to change a tragic trajectory for today's hopeless youth.

If we can even begin to set aside the glaring problems with the choices made in filming Cuties, which is what created much of the controversy in the first place, Cuties would still be a flawed way to send a message. We see the film try to blame the media for its portrayal of women and girls, and yet this media is clearly not for children, so who's exposing them to it? We see that the innocent feminine role models for preteens of yesteryear, like Alex Mack and the Babysitter's Club, have been replaced with promiscuous, filtered adult models - again, not for children, and yet the film seems to focus more on the influence of the media and sexual predators than on the parent's role in protecting their children from bad influences. We see an increasingly digital world that children that age should not have unsupervised access to, and yet the film doesn't really get into this much, either. It seems to blame the way that our society sexualizes women at a younger and younger age, and yet, this is nothing new - in fact, if anything, it's decreased from the "free love" of the 1960's and 1970's, a time back when films like "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" and "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane" were all the rage (they'd be scandalous today; back then, they were known as "all in good fun"). We forget that it was only the 1930's when celebrity Loretta Lynn, a fourteen-year-old girl who didn't know what sex even was, married a grown man who forced her to have sex on their honeymoon. She was not alone in this; the age in which minor children could marry in the western world has always been strikingly low up until the past few decades. The sexualitzation of women and girls has always existed. It was just swept under the carpet more often in the past. The message that this is problematic has always been there long before Cuties: we see recent titles like 2018's "The Tale" address how the sexual revolution of the 1970's glossed over a young girl's traumatic experience being groomed and molested by an adult married couple, or 2016's "Neon Demon" showing how a young girl aspiring to be a model pretends to be a grown woman to fit in, facing lecherous sexual predators at every turn... but what sets Cuties apart is that its message that the sexualization of youth in the media is bad doesn't quite know how to propose a solution, while other films indicated cathartic changes that we can make in ourselves as young women and girls in a sexual world. Cuties doesn't dare suggest maybe getting involved with your child's life, looking into what they're accessing on social media or maybe not giving a child that age their own digital device, nor does it suggest knowing better who your children's friends are, or teaching your child to respect themselves enough to be careful - hell, it doesn't even really put much blame on sexual predators, who are the obvious overarching culprit! It blames the media - not the parents, not the predators, not the digital devices - and it's even more problematic to blame the media when the film then goes and gives an overtly sexual and creepy portrayal of its minor child actors for a mainstream viewing audience. Any good that could have come from Cuties was lost there. It indicates that part of the problem is the main character's Islamic household where her parents, new immigrants, don't quite understand the culture they've moved into (theirs is a household of polygamy, neglect and the brink of poverty), but, again, the film doesn't quite dwell enough on this to suggest that this is the main problem, that the main character has no protective role models at home looking out for her. It's the media's fault, it's society's fault, and in the end, young Amy has to seek nostalgia and innocence all on her own, as her mother leaves her for her husband's wedding to a second wife.

Stylistically, Cuties is again forgettable. While not necessarily bland, its soundtrack is nothing special, its cinematography isn't all that groundbreaking, and its actors are good but not great. The film's attempt to touch on so many themes at once: problematic aspects of Islam, cliques and bullying, social media, youth behavioural problems, domestic abuse, polygamy, immigration, poverty, cultural barriers, dance symbolism and so-forth - it's such a jumble of ideas that any coherent message is either totally lost, or never existed to begin with.

Cuties is simply too behind-the-times and clueless to realize that its thematic material is old news, and that you cannot address a subject by skating loosely around it or by doing the very thing - sexualizing children - that you believe is wrong.

I'm gonna come out and say it - I liked this movie. Now before you come at me with pitchforks, hear me out. I really appreciate this movie's message - a coming of age story that tries to address the issues of child exploitation and the sexualization of young girls. I was honestly greatly reminded of my own experiences in middle school and high school - I remember knowing quite a few students who were similar to the "Cuties:" the "popular girls" who tended to be rather promiscuous and went out of their way to try and act more adult than they actually were.

I genuinely enjoyed following Amy's character arc - like any girl her age, she desires acceptance from her peers and a sense of belonging. The Cuties have seemingly achieved these goals, and so Amy is driven to try and become one of them. She starts acting more rebellious and more openly sexual, because she thinks that will garner the approval of her peers, since it seemingly worked for the Cuties. Eventually Amy realizes that being a Cutie does not make her truly happy, and she decides to go back to being a kid again. The final scene of Amy going outside and playing jump rope with the other kids genuinely made me feel happy.

But as much as I admire Mignonnes for the story and lessons it's trying to tell, I am not very fond of how it was told. In trying to criticize the exploitation and sexualization of young girls, it ends up exploiting and sexualizing young girls - the very thing it is preaching against. Usually in movies teenagers aren't actually played by teenagers, especially in movies where those teenagers are shown doing more adult things like having sex. I'm not sure why the same couldn't be done for Mignonnes. It was completely unnecessary to cast actual young girls in a film that focuses on how young girls tend to be sexualized. I honestly feel awful for these poor actresses... I can't even start to imagine the kinds of things people say to them. And let's not forget the Netflix marketing disaster.

In conclusion - I respect this movie's story and message, but it should have been handled A LOT better. I do not recommend it; the story is not worth seeing actual young girls being exploited.

While we have had other older movies that are infamous for sexualizing children like Taxi Driver or Pretty Baby, they were much better written because unlike Cuties, they actually knew how to criticize the sexualization of minors with the stories they set up for those characters, they knew how to make us care for the children who were being sexualized in their worlds, and most importantly, they were smart enough to take the RIGHT risks while making a point to not exploit the actors by making them do sexually provocative things onscreen. Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields were too young for any real onscreen sex scenes, and they were also talented child actors who knew how to play their characters who learned their lesson before it was too little, too late for it to mean anything for the film.

Cuties fails in all of these aspects because the Cuties are all naughty girls who have no childhood and bad parents or no parents to keep them out of trouble. It is a depressing mess where they normalize theirs and others sexualization of them. Angelica is the only likable main character, while Amy is a selfish jerk who destroys all of her connections with other people except for her mom in the final scene. She does plenty of despicable things, like stealing her older cousin's phone, trying to take a dirty picture of a boy's private part, taking a picture of her own private part with the phone that she stole, stabbing another boy in her class with a pencil, and trying to kill Yasmine to take her place in the Cuties after she was welcomed back in. Cuties just breaks my heart into a million pieces because even though the director-writer Maimouna Doucoure made this movie to criticize the sexualization of minors, Cuties contains none of the commentary or substance that a movie like this SHOULD exist to have! The even sadder part is that the film gives us none of the reasons it should have given to make us feel sorry for Amy exploiting herself, or any Cutie for that matter except for Angelica, yet it tries to paint Amy's mom as the villain when she is doing the right thing to keep Amy out of danger. Funny moments of joy are few and far in between, and unlike Iris or Violet, the other four Cuties' personalities do not come from a sympathetic place or have a good person like Travis Bickle who can guide them in the right direction. Iris and Violet were well-written and empathetic because they started out as innocent kids who fell down the wrong path of life. Cuties is seriously disgusting and falls flat in this regard because Amy, Angelica, Coumba, Jess and Yasmine begin their story thinking that sexualizing themselves is a liberating way to explore their femininity. Because Maimouna Doucoure "recreated the little girl I was at that age," I believe she would be arrested for projecting herself onto Fathia Youssouf if they lived in the US instead of France.

Cuties is nothing but a melodramatic film that does nothing and says nothing against sexualizing children. The only three big things it accomplished are (1) being a big microcosm of all the world's child exploitation/trafficking problems that demonstrate how bad it can get when the victims internalize their suffering, (2) proving that black female movie directors/writers in France can also be sex offenders like the white males Roman Polanski and Zangro, the latter of whom produced Cuties with her, and (3) waking up all of the American and Canadian audiences who are aware that child actor sexualization is a serious crime, by horrifying them with how widely accepted it is in other nations like France and Thailand. I know what the message of this film is supposed to be, but that is no excuse for it to snuff out the childhoods of five kids, when there are a thousand other ways Cuties could have and totally SHOULD have criticized the objectification of young girls who twerk to get attention online, without actually showing real young girls twerking. Cuties deserves all of the panning it gets, just like what Newborn Cuties had 10 years before it.

I watched this because of the fuss over on social media with people wanting to cancel Netflix. The biggest problem with this film is how it was so poorly mis-marketed. The film is actually a disturbing look at a young girl rebelling against her "broken" family.

You watch this "sweet, innocent" girl fall in with the wrong crowd. A group of swearing kids who are entering a dancing contest. The language changes, her appearance does, her behaviour nose-drives - all the time, she is enticed because of how media sexualises women (models etc in skimpy outfits).

Some of the scenes are questionable for sure but I'm not exactly surprised given this is from the country that made Baise Moi. There is no nudity (thank God) and we're shown just enough to know what is going on (such as a young girl taking pictures of her privates to upload to the internet). Unfortunately this is highlighting a real problem in the world though. There are kids doing this because they feel peer pressure. This isn't a make believe film. It's a very real and uncomfortable film. It's deeply unnerving to watch and powerful. I can see why it gets the awards and nominations that it did but - that being said - it is a film I never want to watch again.

Bottom line is: keep an eye on your children and the influences that drive them.

I'm not gonna talk about exploitation etc. There's been a lot of films that have done worse. This is a foreign film. Wasn't well received in America.

With that out of the way, this film... is not good.

I liked that it explored a young woman heavily affected by modern day influences of a hyper-sexualized society BUT like all these movies that get lost in the focus, it just didn't have adequate balance. There's very little integration of the characters into school life which makes school just seem like a prop more than an environment that should have an effect on these girls.

I also feel that the plot could have used some work. I'm left with a sour feeling at the end... So you mean to tell me that your aspiration of being a sexy popular dancer girl was thwarted by some glitter!? It doesn't make sense. Her reason for breaking free from influence was weak and ill-timed. I'd have made it so the previously ostracized girl partially avoids getting pushed into the water and, using her bigger size, overpowers our MC and says something that triggers her to reevaluate her position in the group. She'd then meet the crew, face hostility, have friend mitigate hostility while saying more stuff to prompt reevaluation, and then the crowd reaction to the suggestive performance would be the final nail in the coffin that prompts her to return home.

Also, about the return home... WHAT? Why is the mother calming the aunt down? Didn't she get really cross with the daughter and combo-breaker her??? It should have been the aunt calming the mother down and, in combination with seeing her daughter's tears, the mother eventually doing so.

Another point is the phone theft. I like that the daughter did it. It shows youthful impulse and desperation. I just think that the guy who got robbed should have been an older gentleman. He looks young enough to know what find my phone is.

I don't like that the camera overdid the panning in on the "provocative" shots during the dance. I feel it should have just been done without the focus or less focus than it had been BUT that may be me affected by current sentiment. I'd like to think not though. I also 100% DID NOT LIKE the fact that she was willing to give herself to the phone guy for the phone. She is just a kid, not an experienced hooker. An adult is upset at you and is approaching you demanding and making an effort to take his phone back. As a kid, I know my reaction would have been to either run or freeze up and return the device. Both scenarios would involve crying and begging him not to tell my parents.

I also had a problem with her dropping her mother's phone out the window. She should have gotten that whoopin. This film was dubbed. The dubbing was extremely poorly done. I didn't watch this off of netflix but from what I saw and understood, netflix version was dubbed. Piss poor dubbing left me somewhat disconnected from the film.

I also felt that the only parts that should have been a cause for concern is the attempted seduction of the phone chap and the intensely provocative performance not expected from young girls at the end. The rest of the film with the girls dressing too big for their age and the exploration of sexual themes and the bullying scenes are things I've seen similarities of. HOWEVER, we'd notify the parents (was teaching) and send these girls home if possible. It would have been good to see them getting in trouble with how they were dressed. Schools do that a lot. Again, school should have been a proper environment.

All in all, the film was pretty bad plot-wise for me. I don't like how the resolution tried to be all cutesy. NO. You just messed your friends' hopes and dreams. NOT COOL! She also stole money and a phone and should have gotten whooped. In addition to this, she went missing during a wedding (her parents don't seem to care much when she comes and goes). Dubbing was awful and it just felt robotic and unrealistic at times. Disappointing film.

I suspect Cuties needs no introduction (or Mignonnes if you want the "real" title). It's probably the most talked-about film release to not get derailed by the COVID crisis, either through delays in production or unnecessary ones in distribution (unnecessary because, I assure you, streaming will do just fine while crowded multiplexes are unsafe). The movie, which appeared to sexualize underage girls, was gravely mismarketed by Netflix and it was too little too late when we learned that the movie proper is being "ironic".

Yes, this strange French film is actually about how wrong it is to rob the kiddos of what little innocence modern pop culture and social media let them keep; to dress them up in stripperesque outfits and have them shake what their mamas indeed gave them along with the Doja Cat merch. Syke! Bet you thought this film about twerking 11-year-olds was really about twerking 11-year-olds.

I'll talk about the satirical effectiveness of the material later in this post. First, let's be fairer on the plot and what it actually is: in Paris, a young refugee girl (Fathia Youssuff, who acts just fine) is invited to her more free-spirited neighbor's twerk group (reminding me just slightly, but still too much, of the Swedish film Kidz in da Hood). This product of a hypersexualized culture seems antithetical to the values the girl was taught by her devout Muslim mother, particularly those about the subservient female role, but the defiance adds to her fascination.

I can honestly see potential in this premise, mostly due to the short-circuiting that may occur in political spheres. And newbie director Maïmouna Doucouré does indeed confront the popular false dichotomy between promiscuity and religious cowls. The movie sometimes works as a shocking, Larry Clark-style coming-of-age saga but I posit that delivering this message by doing the very thing you're condemning is unlikely to result in much, outside of the online drama that indeed transpired and didn't end well for Netflix.

Some have argued, nonetheless, that Cuties ain't no biggie because it isn't the end of the world that young kids become aware of sexuality, or even erotic dance routines.

If Cuties does intend to satirize the very sexualization it itself is guilty of (which I might've found more admirably f?cked-up if it was clearer or more outwardly dismal, à la perhaps the Paris Hilton episode of South Park), the confessed intent may not be enough. If Neo-Nazis can't tell facetious Hitler salutes in a YouTube video from the real deal, why did Cuties come to pass? And how?

You aren't going to stick it to the pervs or Spaceys by giving them what they like and then going "this is actually bad", nor is every critic who defends this movie aware that it's being negative - rather than a defiant display of "child sexuality", as one critic named it. The problem is too real to be efficiently addressed with mere irony (that isn't always legible in an occasionally upbeat text), but I will say this: it might be part of Doucoré's point to show how one film so easily can add gasoline to the flames.

Yes, pedos may roll with it without feeling attacked, but so might modern-day parents who film their kids dancing to "Anaconda" (to then become TikTok sensations at age 16). If Cuties had had the girls hang around RuPaul and/or gyrate their hips as a Cardi B-style empowerment move, it might've had even more fans.

It's not exploitation and nowhere near it. The movie is simply bad. There is no real friendship between any of the girls to speak of. They all seem horribly conceited and more concerned with winning a dance contest than anything. By the end of the movie, you don't even know if they wont the contest that the entire fim was about. Maybe the main character slightly evolves her moral compass at the very end, but there is no evidence of it... This movie is absolute garbage.

Things were even this way years ago when I was growing up. The desire to belong and fit in was so important. All important. To fit in was Everything. To be pretty was Everything. Still is. Society creates an ideal of what a beautiful and desired female should be. That ideal is presented to young girls via magazines, movies, commercials, the internet, etc. It's enacted by every one of us every single day when we complain about our weight, when we purchase those special diet plans advertised on TV, when we discuss our beauty spa appointments for botox, when we sponsor our little girls in toddler beauty pageants. WE perpetuate these ideals for young girls and to young girls. One reason this movie is uncomfortable, because it shows young girls dancing in an explicitly suggestive manner. Maybe the dancing should have been portrayed in a more sort of implied manner. But don't fool yourselves if you think that girls this age aren't really doing these things. And don't think they haven't been doing it for years. This is neither condoning nor condemning, only stating fact. The (over)sexualization of females isn't new. Is the other reason this movie so uncomfortable, because it doesn't sugarcoat the subject? The only thing that's changed is the technology.