Cuties Parent Guide

Cuties is nightmare fuel – the kind of examination of early adolescence that will keep parents of tweens awake all night as they ponder the daily reality of their children’s lives. The movie’s protagonist is Amy, played with quiet intensity by Fathia Youssouf. Along with her stoic mother (Maïmouna Gueye) and younger brothers, Amy has just moved into a new government housing project. The eleven-year-old is doing her chores and struggling to adapt to a new school when she overhears a cataclysmic piece of news: her father has returned to Senegal to take a second wife, who will be returning to France and moving in with them.

The tragedy of Amy’s life is that she is experiencing puberty while trapped between two diametrically opposed but equally damaging cultures. The harsh variant of Islam her family follows teaches her that women are fundamentally unclean. As she hears while attending prayers, “In hell there will be many more women than men. Where does evil dwell? In the bodies of uncovered women.” The message is further drilled in by an elderly “aunty” (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) who is determined to impose her rigid interpretation of their religion on both Amy and her mother. Amy’s suffering in the face of these cultural norms is invisible to Aunty and only recognized by her mother after her rage can no longer be ignored.

The teen culture to which Amy turns also fails to provide positive, healthy messages about sexuality or female bodies. Fascinated by the “cuties” (the school’s cool girls), Amy obsessively imitates their clothes and their dance moves, desperate to become part of the group. After she finds highly sexual dance videos on her stolen phone, she leads the group in mimicking the racy choreography. The girls know the moves are considered “sexy” but they really don’t understand the implications of their gyrations. The innocence that underlies their conversations about sex becomes apparent when the fast-talking Coumba (Esther Gohourou) finds a condom and unknowingly blows it up like a balloon.

The plot alone indicates that Cuties is not a movie for kids – and it’s not going to be a movie for most parents either. Watching Amy’s emotional needs go unmet is heartrending and seeing her willing participation in the objectification of her body is deeply unsettling. The sexual content in the movie, while never explicit, is disturbing. In one scene, the girls accuse a security guard of being a child molester and pervert just to make him let them go. In another scene, Amy posts a photo of her genitals (not seen on screen) to rebut suggestions that she’s a little girl. One of the movie’s worst moments is when Amy undoes her jeans and looks seductively at a man whose phone she has stolen. The message is clear: she will trade her body for the phone. Add in a dozen swear words (in the English subtitled version), several scenes of girls bullying each other, repeated thefts committed by Amy (with no consequences), and a potentially lethal physical assault and the content renders the film unsuitable for sensitive viewers.

Director Maïmouna Doucouré tries to end the movie on a hopeful note, but it isn’t believable. Amy’s “come to herself” moment feels unconvincing and she’s going to be called to account for a serious crime she has just committed. There’s no way she’s going to be able to dance her way out of the consequences that inevitably follow the choices she has made.