Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
Amy, an 11-year-old girl, joins a group of dancers named “the cuties” at school, and rapidly grows aware of her burgeoning femininity—upsetting her mother and her values in the process.
Cuties tackles a genuinely provocative and culturally specific coming-of-age story about an 11-year-old Senegalese-French girl navigating clashing value systems, which gives it some thematic distinctiveness. The performances, particularly from the young lead Fathia Youssouf, are naturalistic and emotionally grounded. The cinematography is competent but unremarkable for a French social drama. The film's central tension between traditional religious values and hypersexualized Western youth culture is a real and relevant subject, though the execution remains controversial for the very methods it uses to critique those forces. The ending feels abrupt and underdeveloped, failing to fully resolve Amy's arc or land the thematic message with sufficient impact, which drags down what is otherwise a messy but sincere film.