Cuties: Voyeurism Gone Wrong (Review)
This was originally posted on my old website on 10/09/2020
Cuties is a film that would’ve always been seen as divisive by audiences, but it didn’t help that weeks prior to its release it became the target of a campaign to take it down due to the promotional material Netflix used. The film was quickly branded as pedophilic and that the director herself is a danger to children for filming this.
Cut to September and the film is out on Netflix. I feel as if it would be very easy to dismiss the film but there is nuance needed to be had with this conversation. As uncomfortable as moments in the film make me it’s clear that Cuties is a film about voyeurism, the act of watching.
As stated in Film Theory: “The people who are engaged in voyeurism are called voyeurs. These personalities utilize a number of certain procedures to avoid getting caught on the act. They try to observe their targets from afar. They secretly take picture of their prospects, spying on them on peepholes, invisible camera apparatus, or through the two-way mirrors, and optical instruments like the binoculars, for instance.”
Amy, our protagonist is a young girl from Senegal who now resides in France. The film gives us glimpses into her household, a place where womanhood and sexuality are bound in honour. And most importantly, bound in religion as Amy’s family are devout Muslims. This in itself presents a complicated line for the film to tread as the representation of a few usually becomes representation of many.
Anytime Amy interacts with sexuality or dancing prior to the direct involvement, she is watching. She spies on a girl dancing to Reggaeton in the washroom, she spies on the girls at her school from afar, she sneaks up to watch them practise, she peers at the people around her and researches dancing online.
Amy is bound by confusion from a culture that clearly promotes and appreciates hypersexuality even though she is nowhere near an age for that to be occurring. So she watches intensely and recreates that same behaviour as a way for her to feel accepted somewhere that isn’t her chaotic homelife.
The question is this; does intent outweigh the end result?
It’s clear the message here is a stark warning against the hypersexualisation of girls, something that infiltrates nearly every aspect of our pop culture. But does showing the audience pre-pubescent girls in scantily clad clothing, dancing in a way that many will perceive as sexual, present the themes at hand in the best possible way?
The issue comes in when you take into account Amy’s age. She is not a 16–17-year-old who is nearing her adulthood, she is a child. There is no inherent sexuality to dancing but the cultural context clearly indicates that a certain group of people would use scenes dedicated to the film’s message in a reprehensible way.
In film, there is always the argument of ‘show don’t tell’, don’t direct the audience when you can tell the story through visuals but there is a line somewhere, and I believe this is it. Especially when moments could’ve been alluded to, the editing of the film is bare and realistic. And this gives way to scenes that could’ve simply been cut out or altered in a way to let the audience know what occurs without actually showing us.
This doesn’t only apply to Cuties, it occurs in Pretty Little Liars when a teenager dates her teacher, in Euphoria where statutory rape is deemed normal, in Teen Wolf where the camera lingers on the body of young people for a little too long. Hypersexuality of young people is a common grey area for Film and Television as some argue that it’s realistic so let’s depict it but sometimes, you don’t have to do it. Art isn’t worth the outcome of possible p*dofuel.
However, I do not believe that Maïmouna Doucouré deserves to be blacklisted for this film. With the growing list of French and Hollywood directors, producers and actors who get away routinely with sexual abuse. It’s intellectually dishonest to think that a woman creating a commentary on hypersexualization is the same exact thing as abusing your power over people. A mistake was clearly made with the casting for the film but I don’t believe that she shouldn’t be allowed a shot at redemption.
Rating: 2.5/5
