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.
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.