Without a doubt, Mignonnes, or Cuties as it is titled on Netflix, is the most controversial film of this and probably many years to come. Much of the controversy has come about sight-unseen, something I always try and avoid. So, I steeled myself to watch it.
Is it as bad as you’ve been told? Well, yes – and no.
As is the case with many controversies, most people seem to have rapidly settled themselves in either of two opposing camps and refused to budge an inch since. The movie’s supporters insist that it is a winsome coming-of-age story; it’s detractors thunder that it is disgusting child exploitation.
And they’re both right.
First, the story.
Amy is growing up in a devoutly Muslim Senegalese immigrant community in French-Canada. Her mother is struggling to raise Amy and her two younger brothers while their father is absent (we later learn that he is back in Senegal, procuring a second wife). Amy finds escape from the oppression of her community by joining a group of rebellious girls who’ve formed a dance group they call “the Cuties”. As her father’s return from Senegal and his impending second wedding approach, Amy drifts further from the control of her mother and community matriarch Auntie. She steals her cousin’s phone and discovers social media. The Cuties sign on for a local dance competition. Amy’s life spins further and further out of control, culminating in the make-or-break day of the competition.
Ultimately, Amy recoils in shock from what she realises she and her friends are doing, re-dresses in normal kid clothing (neither the dreary Islamic tents nor the pole-dancer chic of The Cuties) and runs out to jump rope with other kids, happy and content at last.
The basic problem with Cuties is that writer-director Maïmouna Doucouré has a fine and timely story to tell – but it’s just been executed in the worst way imaginable. As journalist Tim Poole has said, it’s as if they set out to make a story about the dangers of children on crack and then made it by giving a group of children crack and filming it.
When Stanley Kubrick filmed The Shining, he structured the shooting schedule and kept a close eye on child actor Danny Lloyd, such that Lloyd was completely unaware that it was a horror film until many years later. One story is that the guard almost slipped when Lloyd wandered in on one of Jack Nicholson’s famous axe scenes. The instant he spotted Danny, though, Nicholson quickly shifted gears into goof-off mode. As far as Danny was aware, it was just Jack being silly.
This is a lesson that director Maïmouna Doucouré should have considered when filming Cuties. Allowing that Doucouré is a debut director, where Kubrick was a veteran, someone should have taken the director aside and explained that, well, there’s some really inappropriate stuff going on, here. And someone should definitely have given cinematographer Yann Maritaud a clip over the ear and shouted, “No more close-ups of little girls’ asses!”
Cuties is like watching two films. There’s the film centred around Amy’s family and the dynamics of girl-friends – when they’re not dancing. That film is very good. Doucouré captures the shifting allegiances, bullying and friendship of the girls perfectly. Fathia Youssouf is clearly a talented actress. Maïmouna Gueye delivers a magnificently understated performance as Mariam, Amy’s mother, who struggles every bit as much as Amy with the oppression of their Muslim community. Mbissine Thérèse Diop also excels as the sinister, domineering Auntie.
That’s the good film.
Then there’s the other one.
The problem with the other film is not so much its story as its execution. The camera constantly zooms in on the 11 year old’s backsides and crotches. Even when they’re just walking up stairs, the screen is filled with their wiggling, short-shorts. The mid-point, where Amy coaches the other Cuties to ramp up the bumping-and-grinding to pornographic levels, is excruciating enough. The big dance scene at the competition is just jaw-droppingly shocking. No doubt Doucouré intended it to be, but the camera work is just too clearly salacious to be justified. In any case, the shock value has, by this point, been diluted by too-constant repetition.
Just how many close-ups of pre-pubescent crotches did Cuties really need, to make its point? We know that sexualisation of children is wrong, and Maïmouna Doucouré clearly does, too. Which makes it so much more bizarre to criticise the sexualisation of children by, well, sexualising children.
Someone, somewhere in the chain from scripting and shooting, coaching the little girls in their dance moves, to the decision by Netflix to buy the film, should have been able to sit up and say, “Stop!”
Mignonnes (Cuties) is currently streaming on Netflix.
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