Cuties - Film Review

There has been a lot of furore about the film Cuties being released on Netflix, not lease because of the artwork.

Netflix did issue an apology, however, by then the damage had been done.

Most of the fuss about this seems to have been in the US, so it had bypassed me.  It was only on a couple of FB groups I'm in that this has been discussed, with articles and tweets showing both sides of the 'debate'.

Recently, however, I have been seeing more friends in the UK sharing how this film promotes paedophilia and sexualises preteens, it is encouraging children to sexualise themselves etc and even one video where the person is calling for the actors' parents to be prosecuted and have their children removed for allowing them to be in this film(!), yet the articles I've seen suggest that this isn't the case at all.  I have asked people who are sharing this material whether they have seen it, and they admit that they haven't, but are warning other parents about it... So, this morning I watched it for myself.

First of all, this is a French (I think) film that has been dubbed into English. The dubbing isn’t to bad, though it is obvious in some places and there are parts (I don’t know if these are an African language, or Arabic) that haven’t been dubbed at all. Secondly, it is not a ‘feel good’ film. There is no happy ending, and is the type of film where I get to the end and think ‘so what?’. Also, it is a 15. Now I know that a 15 is only a rating, and it doesn’t stop kids watching a film (and may even make it more desirable), but for children, this is a boring film. Even for me, it was quite boring, and I only watched it to find out what all the fuss was about. (Yes, yes, clearly their advertising strategy worked…)

So, what happens in the film?

A girl, Amy, moves to a French city and doesn’t know anybody. Coming from an Islamic background, there is a bit of a culture shock as she notices other children her age dancing and dressing differently to herself. She spies on them and decides that she wants to be more like them, so unbeknownst to her mum, she gets a cropped top and tries to change her image.

As Amy lives in the same block of flats at the girls, she gets into her good books and they allow Amy to be friends with them. The girls clearly have no real understanding of boys/men, and are discussing how long a boy’s penis is and they persuade Amy, with her newly stolen phone, to film a boy using a urinal. The boy shouts at Amy, and the girls are disappointed that they can’t see anything.

Amy does film the girls’ dance troupe, Cuties, and then spends hours alone in her bathroom at home learning the dance moves. After a fight between two of the members of Cuties, Amy is able to take her place as she has already learned the routine. Amy tries to add to the girls routine, by searching the internet for other dance moves, and falls upon lots of twerking and, for want of a better phrase, women dry-humping the floor.

Meanwhile, Amy’s dad is getting remarried, Amy starts her period and “becomes a woman”, and she is now getting lots of attention from boys due to the way she dresses and how she acts. With her friends, she sneaks into Lazer Quest, gets caught, pleads innocence and then dances provocatively to prevent the cops/their parents being called.

The person from whom Amy stole the mobile phone (he is either family or a family friend), discovers Amy has it, and when he tries to get it back, she locks herself in the bathroom and takes the equivalent of a dick pic. She then gets bullied for that, other people ask the rest of the Cuties for similar photos and they throw her out of the group, and the previous girl gets called back in.

At the end of the film is the big dance competition. Amy decides she wants to be in the competition, gets her costume on and walks along the river seeing the girl who has taken her place. Amy pushes her in the river, and after checking she has found a buoy to hold on to, Amy runs to the competition, ready to dance. In front of everybody, the girls dance their very sexual dance and it is not well received by the audience or the judges. Before the end of the dance, Amy stops and breaks down in tears and runs to her fathers wedding. She gets told off by her great aunty for dressing like a whore, but her mum sticks up for her, and the film ends with her dressed in jeans playing jump rope with other kids.

One of the things that has been said about this film, is that it encourages kids to spy and film in bathrooms. It really does not. As I’ve said, I can’t imagine any preteens actually wanting to watch this film, but the scene in question certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone else to act this way.

The dance moves are highly sexual, and that is what this film is trying to highlight – the hypersexualisation of our kids. Having watched it, I don’t believe this film is encouraging children to act that way. As a dance-mum (albeit classical dance), whose girls have been in dance competitions (so I know all about the skin-tight costumes, bright make-up and false eyelashes), I was interested to see what this film said about that. In short, it didn’t. The routine that the girls have learned is from MTV-style dance videos. As many children, do, the characters simply copy dance moves that they have seen adults perform. And yes, it looks ridiculous. Even ignoring the fact that twerking is of African origin, as is the character Amy, these are kids pulling silly poses. It does not look “sexy” in the slightest, just ridiculous, and I would throw the question back at anyone who can look at an 11yo as a sexual object.

Allegedly, when the girls are dancing, there are a lot of “crotch shots”. Again, this isn’t true (assuming crotch to mean from the front, not from the back). The camera does occasionally zoom in on the girls’ behinds, but this is because it is [meant to be] Amy with her mobile phone, and her fascination with bums and womanly figures, after being teased by the girls for having a flat bum herself.

One accusation thrown at the film is true, but again, there is context. At one point, the girls are learning how to twerk, so they are using their hands to move one another’s bodies. This is not done in a sexual way, but in trying to get the beat/rhythm of the moves so they are all in time.

The girls do dance to get out of trouble with the security guards at Lazer Quest, after already accusing one of them as a pervert. This is often how girls learn about their own sexuality, and boundaries, and “women’s wily ways” etc. It isn’t always appropriate, and I don’t think this film is suggesting that it is appropriate nor that any young girls watching should try and emulate the characters.

Amy does take a photo of her underwear/vulva (you can’t tell from the film), but nothing is seen. She gets bullied for it in the film, called a stripper and a whore, and is thrown out the dance troupe for it, so neither is suggesting this is appropriate nor acceptable behaviour.

The final dance scene – the competition – is shocking (as it is meant to be), cringe-worthy and horrible. And they all just look ridiculous. The girls are on the stage, gyrating, putting their fingers in their mouths, fluttering eye lashes and pouting; and then there is a repeat of the twerking and dry-humping the floor. I know I would be mortified if my girls tried to dance this way. To me, this highlights exactly what happens when children are left to learn from the internet without an adult guiding them. For example, my girls do Jazz and Modern dancing, and though there is no official law, their dance school will not teach them certain grades/exams until they reach a specific age due to some of the moves being risqué. 

Lots of kids are not taught about sex, relationships, personal health etc in an appropriate or timely way. As such, they turn to peers or the internet to guide them. It pains me to think that there are many young people who think body hair is nasty, disgusting or unhygienic. It pains me to think that there are many young people who think they have to act a certain way, dress a certain way, do specific sexual things, in order to be liked, wanted or desired. It pains me to think of all these children who grow up to become adults and think this is all normal behaviour.

So, about this film: Would I recommend it? 

Not particularly. Like I said at the start, it’s quite boring (though I appreciate that I may not be cultured enough to like this type of thing). If there was a happy ending, or if there was some tension that could be resolved, or some kind of progress in the film at all, but there really wasn’t. In short, a girl tries to fit in, goes waaay too far, and ends up maybe as a happy medium, but we don’t actually know. We don’t know if she has any friends left. We are just left hanging. It’s not the spawn of satan as some people think, and it certainly doesn’t promote paedophilia any more than taking your kids to the beach would, or simply a clothing catalogue. It does look at the emerging sexuality of young girls, but this film is from the young girls’ pov (ie wanting to become sexy and failing), rather than from an older man’s pov (ie looking on them lecherously). And it didn’t give me the icky feeling that I have felt when watching films whose material is much less taboo (I’m looking at you: Indecent Proposal. Yuck!).