Netflix’s ‘Cuties’ is a Heartbreaking Coming-of-Age Film, Both Modern and Timeless

The 11-year-old girls in Cuties—a French Netflix film that premiered at Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night—have a tentative grasp on the concept of sex. They theorize that oral sex involves a man’s penis filling up a woman’s entire body, and they know that condoms have something to do with AIDS, but they’re not quite sure what. But what they know with certainty is that sexuality is a girl’s key to attention and power. And they know that power is something they want.

From French writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré—whose short film, Maman(s), was named best short at Sundance, Toronto and at the Césars in 2017—Cuties (titled Mignonnes in French) is a coming-of-age film that will speak volumes to anyone who has lived through the agonizingly confusing time that is girlhood. At yet, at the same time, the story tells feels specific and personal.

Our protagonist is Amy (Fathia Youssouf), an 11-year-old girl living with her mother (Maïmouna Gueye) and her two younger brothers in a small apartment in Paris. The family is waiting for Amy’s father to return from Senegal, where he has gotten engaged to another woman. Taking a second (or third or fourth) wife is a traditional Muslim marital practice, however, women’s rights movements have lobbied for restrictions on polygamy and some countries, including the U.S., have banned it. Amy’s mother insists she’s happy for her husband, but Amy secretly witnesses her mother sobbing and self-harming in a private moment.

Amy is distracted from her family’s woes when she meets Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni). Angelica and Amy are the same age, and classmates, but Angelica wears leather pants, crop tops, and flattens her long hair with an iron. She’s an obvious cool girl. Angelica is “nice” to Amy, in the sense that when her posse harasses Amy on the schoolyard, she half-heartedly tells them to stop. Despite their cruelty, Amy desperately wants to join their clique, who call themselves “The Cuties.” The key, she knows, is through the sensual dance routine the girls are practicing for an upcoming dance competition. Unfortunately, their crop tops and sexy dance moves go against everything Amy’s religious Muslim family stands for.

But Amy finds ways. She borrows her younger brother’s shirt as a DIY crop-top. She steals her neighbor’s phone and secretly gives herself dance lessons via YouTube music videos. When one of The Cuties gets kicked out of the group—for betraying Angelica, their de facto leader—Amy impresses them with an audition. She has a secret weapon: A particularly risque dance move that involves humping the floor. Not even The Cuties have dared to be that sexual before.

For American audiences, Cuties is an international story about a specific subset of Paris rarely seen on screen: A working-class, Muslim, Senegalese family. But it’s also a universal story about girlhood. Doucouré’s script perfectly captures that preteen desperation to fit in, which so many girls understand to mean to “be sexy.” With the daily barrage of hypersexualized women in media, how can you blame them? Amy’s goal is not to have sex with men—again, she barely understands the mechanics of sex—it’s to win the approval of her classmates.

Gueye is wonderful Amy’s warm, surprisingly forgiving mother, and Youssouf is nothing short of phenomenal as Amy herself. Amy’s every emotion is welled up in her eyes, and she’s clearly a rising star. (The other child actors are not quite on her level, but they don’t really need to be.) But most of all, this is a stellar feature debut that proves is a storyteller to watch. The heartbreaking lesson Amy eventually learns is there’s an invisible line between “sexy” and “slut.” One will score you an invite to the cool kids’ table, the other will get banned for life. It’s a lesson most women learn, and for each passing generation, it’s a lesson that seems to come sooner and sooner.

Cuties premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 23 and will stream on Netflix in Spring 2020.

Check out the rest of Decider’s coverage at Sundance Film Festival.

Watch Cuties on Netflix