Cuties

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We've gone on holiday by mistake
Soooooooo this is quite the hot Potato at the moment, setting the Internet on fire. What are MoFo thoughts?

"Cuties (French: Mignonnes) is a 2020 French coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by French-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré in her feature directorial debut. The film stars Fathia Youssouf, Médina El Aidi-Azouni, Esther Gohourou, Ilanah Cami-Goursolas and Maïmouna Gueye. The plot revolves around a French-Senegalese girl with a traditional Muslim upbringing who is caught between traditional values and Internet culture. According to the filmmakers, the film is intended to criticise the hypersexualisation of pre-adolescent girls"

I for one won't be watching as it's not something I find particularly interesting, and I don't like the thought of me, a 36 year old man sat at home watching some 11 year old's dance about in a somewhat sexual way.

However I do think the rage mob is going a bit over the top, but is their rage justified? I can't work it out.
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Not paid any attention to it tbh, as far as I knew it was a movie about dancing kids.
Like, High School Musical for toddlers.

I guess people just get their asses in a knot over anything these days.



We've gone on holiday by mistake
It won 60 awards during the film festival season.

Comment on it this morning on my friends Facebook post, "They should get the directors, producers and anyone behind the scenes and throw them straight on death row the filthy nonces". (made by someone I don't know).



I watched it just to see what the fuss was about. I can't say I loved it, and I can't say I hated it either. I will provide a quick review of it later in the Rate the Last Movie You Saw thread.
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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa



No chance I'll be watching the movie, but the outrage against it seems excessive. The vulnerabilities are out there everywhere for young girls unfortunately, so I guess we should shut down all dance studios/gymnastics classes/etc for females until they turn 18.



It's nuanced, which is why people are fighting about it so fruitlessly: because the correct position is not easily summarized or clearly to one side.

It's obvious people who assumed the film was glorifying this stuff before they saw it jumped the gun. They hadn't seen the film or considered that it might be depicting something to expose it as unacceptable. Now that the film is out, we can see this is true, but we can also see that the filmmakers probably depicted too much in the service of that.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Whoooooo. Try to have a nuanced conversation with most of my facebook contacts. Trying to explain the movie may be more a criticism of the real world scenarios that so many parents support, if not create, and I'm likely to see my house in flames. I am always curious though, how people who run through the town with pitchforks and torches are usually the same people that support similar patterns with gradeschool pageants, cheerleader moves, or local dance groups. Odd balance, to me. I get the outrage of the movie. Not when what's depicted happens already and no one seems bothered by the reality of it. Just a movie about it. Very disappointing to me the complete lack of self reflection a lot of times.
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Yeah, agreed. That said, I saw some clips and commentary from people who did see it, and boy...sure seems like they lost the plot a little in how they depicted a thing they're trying to criticize.



The outrage around this has been ridiculous and it's clear that any legitimate concerns about the content of the film were quickly hijacked to further what I see as an anti-liberal culture war by online conspiracy theorists, groups like Qanon.

It's disappointing that their aims were easily met and criticism spread like wildfire through social media, I've seen popular figures share inaccuracies about the film, people sharing false facts and scenes, fake screenshots and so on. Lots of US political candidates sharing false outrage having never watched the film, not just limited to "the right" either with people like Tulsi Gabbard playing into the populist narrative and jumping on something she clearly hasn't seen.

Some people when called out on whether they've seen it, reduce their criticisms to the fact that any depiction of underage girls dancing in a film is itself exploitation. Whether that is or not should be the actual debate. For the record, I don't think it does - from what I can tell, I still need to see it myself and I'm largely going off what I've read from critics I trust.

I really enjoyed reading Richard Brody's review and it makes me interested to see the film...

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/th...-wing-campaign

So yeah, this isn't part of some American Hollywood Liberal agenda to normalise paedophilia. It's a French film by a French-Senegalese director. How about we speak to the people involved in the film and see what they think? Yeah Netflix's marketing was terrible, but I honestly think it's embarrassing and a sad reflection of the current political discourse especially in the US that so many major figures are willing to play into this populist attack on the film.
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We've gone on holiday by mistake
Whoooooo. Try to have a nuanced conversation with most of my facebook contacts. Trying to explain the movie may be more a criticism of the real world scenarios that so many parents support, if not create, and I'm likely to see my house in flames. I am always curious though, how people who run through the town with pitchforks and torches are usually the same people that support similar patterns with gradeschool pageants, cheerleader moves, or local dance groups. Odd balance, to me. I get the outrage of the movie. Not when what's depicted happens already and no one seems bothered by the reality of it. Just a movie about it. Very disappointing to me the complete lack of self reflection a lot of times.
I accused a friend this morning of getting his pitchfork out on this and other issues

Facebook is the modern version of villagers wanting to burn witches at the stake.

I used the analogy that it's like an anti racism film being made where characters repeatedly use the N word, to show how bad it is, and the trailer being all N this, N that without context, making black people very angry without having seen the film.

I wonder if Netflix will make a movie like this again? Probably not.



Some people when called out on whether they've seen it, reduce their criticisms to the fact that any depiction of underage girls dancing in a film is itself exploitation. Whether that is or not should be the actual debate. For the record, I don't think it does - from what I can tell, I still need to see it myself and I'm largely going off what I've read from critics I trust.
Inherently? No. But from what I've seen it's difficult to avoid the idea that it goes a bit far in that direction. I can link to some fairly substantive commentary/clips on this if that helps, but it seems clear that the film does beyond whatever amount of depiction would be strictly necessary to make its point.

Anyway, I agree that should be the debate. But now we're in the normal partisan wedge issue cycle of people overreacting and then other people reflexively taking the other side to counteract the overreacting and at that point the issue is just another cultural war/political proxy.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
(oops. Yoda broke my reply order!)


@gandalf26
In all honesty, I think they will. They've gotten a LOT of free advertisement out of this. I'm curious how many people have watched this movie now, only because of the outrage? I'm curious too, subscriber numbers and how that has been affected, if at all.



Well, as some may know I thrive on controversy so obviously I watched Cuties the day it came to Netflix. I didn't follow the premature rage very closely but some of it spilled (at least in the form of humoristic acknowledgment) to places where I go (I wasn't even aware of the film before that).

As expected, the presentation of the movie by haters is completely off. I presume that the vast majority of these people haven't seen the film but have formed their opinion based on a poor marketing campaign and the hate videos. I guess people need their hysteria.

Like I said in my short review in "rate the last movie you saw" thread, I didn't particularly like the film (I need my coming of age movies to have likable characters but I hated all the girls here). Technically it's solid and it has some seriously great acting (especially by the kids).

I wonder how low IQ is needed to see the film as praise to pedophilia, though (and I'm not even talking about these girls being pubescent)? Yes, Cuties has (a lot of) provocative material that's meant to make the viewer uncomfortable. It's about being a kid in a world where media/entertainment is so saturated with sex (and its conflict with a conservative Muslim background). The girls in the movie do nothing else than replicate what they see in their magazines, music videos, etc. It rubs this "children imitating the mainstream entertainment" imagery against the viewer's face quite relentlessly but leaves the conclusions to the viewer (good film making to me).

Cuties wants to say something. It needs its imagery to relay the message. I firmly believe that the people most enraged by it are the ones who feel seduced or aroused by those images, and want to blame anything but themselves of that troubling realization (like all those anti-gay pastors who've been caught having sex with men).

The outrage around this has been ridiculous and it's clear that any legitimate concerns about the content of the film were quickly hijacked to further what I see as an anti-liberal culture war by online conspiracy theorists, groups like Qanon.
Yeah. It's (once again) a saddening proof that there are idiots on both sides of that fence. The same people ranting about the cancel culture are now screaming "CANCEL NETFLIX!"
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Survivor 5s #2 Bitch
I watched it to see what the fuss was all about.

I liked it. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I felt it was a decent exploration into a young girl's experience of growing up too fast in a world of social media where all of our mistakes are up there forever. It was uncomfortable, incredibly so in some cases, but part of that was definitely because things like this happen in real life. Look at crap like Dance Moms, beauty pageants etc.

Was the poster Netflix used distasteful? Absolutely. Was the film exploitative? No, I don't think it was.



A system of cells interlinked
The outrage around this has been ridiculous and it's clear that any legitimate concerns about the content of the film were quickly hijacked to further what I see as an anti-liberal culture war by online conspiracy theorists, groups like Qanon.

It's disappointing that their aims were easily met and criticism spread like wildfire through social media, I've seen popular figures share inaccuracies about the film, people sharing false facts and scenes, fake screenshots and so on. Lots of US political candidates sharing false outrage having never watched the film, not just limited to "the right" either with people like Tulsi Gabbard playing into the populist narrative and jumping on something she clearly hasn't seen.

Some people when called out on whether they've seen it, reduce their criticisms to the fact that any depiction of underage girls dancing in a film is itself exploitation. Whether that is or not should be the actual debate. For the record, I don't think it does - from what I can tell, I still need to see it myself and I'm largely going off what I've read from critics I trust.

How do we know what people like Tulsi Gabbard have and haven't seen?
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A system of cells interlinked
Tulsi Gabbard called it child pornography I believe, which it is not.
Fair point. I was just pushing back against assumptions about what other people have and haven't seen, when we can't really know.

I haven't seen it, but my first inkling was whether or not it was truly exploitative, or whether it was trying to make a statement about the media-infused childhoods young kids face these days, and the inevitable influence on their world view. This is something i will need to worry about in the future, as the father of a young girl.



Can we hold Netflix responsible for their marketing campaign?


There's a world of difference between the original posters of the movie and the ones created by Netflix. Almost a deliberate attempt by Netflix to create a controversy, which in turn would grab more attention.


PS: I haven't seen the movie.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Well I feel like people should not be allowed to judge a movie before they see it in context. Otherwise they are just pretending to be psychic and judging something they do not know of.

I don't have Netflix now, so I cannot watch it at the moment, but when I read some of the comments about the movie, it's still hard to judge what people are talking about, when it's taken out of context. For example, some comments say that one of the movies bad scenes is when an 11 year old, shows another character her breast.

But do we actually see a breast or is it just implied. Things like that make a huge difference but the comments I've come across do not go into such specifics, which I think are important.

Also, the movie did get a 90 on rottentomatoes, so that must mean something. But some people online have pointed out that the only reason why the filmmakers are praising the movie, is because the director is a female, and that if the filmmaker was male, they would tear it apart. Is that true though, and the critics are perhaps giving it a pass because of the director, rather than the movie itself?