Please welcome new contributor Ren Jender reporting from Sundance...
At first glance Cuties, the debut feature from French-Senegalese director Maïmouna Doucouré has a strong resemblance to Mati Diop's Atlantics. Like Ada, Atlantics' main character, Cuties' Amy (Fathia Youssouf) is torn between the edicts of her Senegalese parents' strict Muslim faith (an early scene shows Amy wearing a headscarf --even though she's only 11-- as she listens to the sermon on the virtues of modesty) and more hedonistic, self-centered Western ideals. The latter is personified by Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni) Amy's neighbor in a Parisian apartment building. Angelica is also 11, but dresses in crop tops and tight vinyl pants or short skirts...
Amy initially spies Angelica dancing as she herself is stuck doing laundry. (Amy is also acting as a surrogate mother to her two siblings and these scenes send a tingle of recognition to those given adult responsibilities as kids). After a period of cruel hazing from Angelica and her group of friends at school (played by Esther Gohourou, Myriam Hamma and Ilanah Cami-Goursolas) Amy joins them and they become sisters in spandex. They practice together as a group for the big, local, dance competition, incorporating the sexually explicit moves of the music videos Amy watches compulsively.
Cuties director Maïmouna Doucouré on setCuties, like its predecessor, also has touches of the supernatural. Amy's father is marrying a second wife and the fancy Senegalese-style dress Amy is supposed to wear to the wedding knocks from inside the closet door, bleeds real blood, and even breathes on its own.
But unlike Atlantics, Cuties (also acquired by Netflix) can't seem to cut its lanky, radiant lead a break. For every triumph Youssouf's Amy has, she suffers humiliation, as when a group of rival girl dancers pull down her pants during a fight and reveal, beneath those adult clothes, she's wearing children's underwear. Céline Sciamma's Girlhood had a similar scene, but Girlhood wasn't afraid to explore the sexual draw the "bad" girls had for its main character; while Amy's focus on twerking butts and bouncing breasts is, while not exactly innocent (though the girls know very little about sex), not queer either. Other women filmmakers have spoken about how they avoided sexualizing the very young actresses in their films, but Doucouré and cinematographer Yann Maritaud focus on the girls' body parts with the same relish the music videos do, leaving the message of this film decidedly mixed.