Cuties Review

The coming-of-age drama, Cuties, shows the perils of growing up as it focuses on an 11-year-old girl who’s torn between her traditional Senegalese background and a dance troupe from her school.

Amy (Fathia Youssouf) is a Senegalese girl who has immigrated to a housing estate in Paris. Her mother (Maïmouna Gueye) and the family matriarch (Mbissine Therese Diop) try to teach Amy that she needs to become a modest woman and do her duty. However, Amy gets drawn to Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni), a girl from her apartment building who dresses explicitly and leads a dance troupe. This leads Amy down a dark path.

Cuties was an acclaimed film – it won the Directing Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. Netflix brought the international distribution rights and helped the film reach a wider audience. However, it was also one of the most controversial films to be released by Netflix. This was partly due to the subject matter, but it suffered the most by Netflix’s tone-deaf marketing. Cuties has been called paedophiliac, leading to an online campaign to ‘cancel Netflix’ and the film has been reviewed bombed. At the time of publication, it has a 2.7 rating on IMDB, a score that reserved for amateurish productions.

Cuties isn’t an easy watch because of its subject manner, but it was far from being pro-paedophile propaganda. When the girls do dance provocatively or dress in inappropriate clothing the audience was meant to be shocked. It was far from glorifying this type of behaviour. The controversy was amped up by the exposure of Netflix. If Cuties was released on a more specific service like Curzon, Mubi, or Criterion then the film would have simply reached the intended audience and any controversy would have been muted.

The aim of Cuties was to show the rabbit hole a young girl could go down. Amy starts by playing around with her clothes and try to iron her hair before she practices dancing, and the girls watching videos. The film was a critique of how easy kids can access this type of media on their phones and computers, and the expectations that they put upon themselves. Girls altered their photos when they put them online to make themselves look better and believe they need to dance sexily.

When the film does move into more suggestive material it was meant to shock and horrify the audience. When the troupe dance in a competition the crowd’s reaction was one of disgust did and Angelica was told off when a teacher saw what she was wearing.

The story of Cuties was similar to two projects from 2003 – the indie drama Thirteen and the British TV movie Pleasureland. These were films that focused on teenage girls who want to become popular and befriend a classmate. This leads the girls to fall into delinquency, clashing with their single mothers, and explore their sexuality. However, Amy was younger than the lead characters in those films. Amy’s a lot like the main character in Pleasureland because they both start as naïve outsider who’s so desperate to impress the popular girls that their actions become the most extreme.

Cuties does tackle other themes. The writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré was from a Senegalese background so some of her life experience was properly brought into the film. Amy had issues at home – one of the most powerful scenes in the film was when Amy hides and hears that her dad was marrying another woman and her mum break down in tears.

Cuties works on both a micro and macro level. The story of fitting in is relatable to anyone and Amy suffers the long slog of trying to get into a group but can immediately be left out. Cuties can also be seen as a commentary on France’s policy of assimilation because that country demands immigrants to fit in and act French.

The other aspect of the film was the setting because it takes place in a poor neighbourhood. When Amy first sees the Cuties dancing, they were practicing by the train tracks and their reaction to Amy was to throw stones at her. Angelica reveals to Amy that she barely sees her parents because they work at a restaurant and they have never seen her dance. Whilst they are doing everything to support their children financially, their jobs prevent them from saying anything about their daughter’s behaviour.

There was an irony with Cuties because it doesn’t deserve the controversy surrounding it but the controversy helped the film gain an audience. If you can look passed the dodgy marketing Cuties was a well done coming-of-age film that tackles some heavy issues.

A note of concern, when watching the film the default was an English dub, so you would need to change the settings if you want to watch the film in French and with subtitles.