By Stephanie Sical
¨Cuties¨ is a dramatic film that misses the mark to inspire young girls by overtly sexualizing them.
The movie is written and directed by Maïmouna Doucouré and is her debut as director.
The movie is disturbing for many adult viewers and fairly inappropriate for children.
The international film’s idea is to be inspirational for little girls who grow up suppressed in a strict family and religion.
The movie however fails to deliver on that, and the sexual way the 11-year-old cast stars are displayed distracts viewers from grasping the moral of the story.
The film stars Fathia Youssouf, Médina El Aidi-Azouni, Esther Gohourou, Ilanah Cami-Goursolas and Maïmouna Gueye play a group of dancers named “The Cuties” at school.
Amy, an 11 year old girl, joins and quickly becomes aware of her femininity.
Joining the group upsets her mother, who is a strict Muslim woman, and also compromises Amy’s values in the process.
Amy, an immigrant girl from Senegal, lives with her mother Mariam and two younger brothers in an apartment in one of Paris’s poorest neighborhoods.
Amy is tired of the prayers and religious values in general that her aunt seeks to impose on her.
Things turn swiftly as Amy is fascinated by her disobedient neighbor Angelica’s twerking dancing group “Cuties,” an adult-style dance troupe.
This is in contrast to her religious customs, values and traditions. The pre-teens practice for a competition and adopt revealing outfits.
It is the hunger for fame and approval on social media that influences Amy to incorporate sexually suggestive dance moves into the choreography.
Amy is already humiliated at school, then decides to send a compromising photo of her vulva on social networks, which causes her to be rejected by her classmates.
She does this thinking that the more sexual she was the more successful and popular she would become
The dance scenes are hard to watch, considering that the actresses are only 11 and the close-up shots can make anyone who’s watching quite uncomfortable. They have revealing outfits, arched backs, and are twerking while putting their fingers in their mouths in a sexual way.
“Cuties” has captured the attention of many viewers around the world, but in the US it has been ranked #7 over the past week on Netflix.
People were expressing their discontent and disappointment over the fact that Netflix has not taken action in the matter and allowed such controversial movies to be visible for the public.
#CancelNetflix and #BoycottNetflix was trending on social media a day after the film debuted.
The social media platform Tik Tok has made an effort to draw enough attention to the films inappropriateness in order for Netflix to take the film down.
Some ¨Tik Tok¨ users have even taken an extra step and have uploaded videos of themselves unsubscribing from their long-term Netflix accounts.