I watched the movie, and in a vacuum, I can see where the more controversial scenes can be interpreted as lascivious. But in the context of the movie, it really didn't feel out of place at all. The scenes are intentionally awkward, and I think part of the film's message is to make you feel uncomfortable. It tackles several themes, actually, and has quite some depth. Really, the biggest complaint I have is the movie is rather boring.

I tried to watch some videos, but every single one is a reactionary take that uses a hammer when a chisel would be far more appropriate. Anyone come across any reviews or videos that take the issue rather seriously, but can also critique the film on its own merits?

  • Wertheimer [any]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Richard Brody has a positive review. He's had some weird, weird takes in the past - see especially his review of Clint Eastwood's The Mule . . . or any of his latter-era Clint Eastwood reviews - but he's emphatically not a right-winger. (In fact, the weirdest thing about his Eastwood reviews is that he tries to give those films a "woke" reading.)

    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/cuties-mignonnes-the-extraordinary-netflix-debut-that-became-the-target-of-a-right-wing-campaign

    “Cuties” is a film of the center, and it’s aesthetically of the center—it depicts the unconsidered without advancing to the realm of the subjective, and it doesn’t allow its young protagonists much discourse, outer or inner. It’s not a movie of introspection and self-consideration; it’s more a story of the rule than of the exception, of what’s unduly extraordinary about the effort to live an ordinary life. As such, it’s a story of French society at large—its exclusions and the exertions demanded to overcome them. Though many of Amy’s actions are dubious, her spirit of revolt is nonetheless sublime and heroic. “Cuties” dramatizes what people of color and immigrants endure as a result of isolation and ghettoization, of not being represented culturally and politically—and of not being represented in French national mythology. Its underlying subject is the connection of personal identity to public identity—and the urgency of transforming the very notion of French identity, of changing the idea of who’s considered the representative face of France. That idea is brought to the fore in an extraordinary, brief, symbolic ending; it’s enough to give a right-winger a conniption.**