Have you heard about “Cuties,” the new movie about to be released on Netflix? Cuties is the English name given to a French film about a group of four young girls who are part of a twerking dance group. Yes, you heard that right. This is a movie about 11-year-olds twerking. Netflix put out some promotional materials for the film this week and well…Here’s a poster Netflix created for this:

Here’s the description.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a petition was launched asking Netflix not to release the film. It has already received more than 90,000 signatures. And today Netflix admitted fault, at least as far as the promotional materials go:

We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.

— Netflix (@netflix) August 20, 2020

The new description for them film reads: “Amy, 11 years old, tries to escape family dysfunction by joining a free-spirited dance clique named ‘Cuties,’ as they build their self confidence through dance.” In other words, Netflix is downplaying the sexual angle now, but was the original art and description really “not representative” of the film?

A review of this film published back in January said it contained plenty of close-ups of pre-teen twerking, to the point that the reviewer wondered whether the director was hoping to provoke outrage:

Doucoure’s screenplay requires Amy’s behaviour to escalate radically (and often hysterically) in the absence of any real-world consequence. She steals a phone from a family friend and money from her distracted mother; her brother floods the bathroom; she goes to school wearing a tank top and PVC trousers and has screeching fights with rival gangs. Yet nobody in this close-knit community raises an alarm. In short, she’s acting out in some style, and pretty soon she wins a place in the Cuties troop despite her “flat ass”.

We then move to outrageous musical montages involving close-up crotch shots of pouting pre-teens. Doucoure seems to want to provoke censure, but fails precisely because she’s trying so hard. Ultimately, that’s the fate that also befalls Amy as she learns the perils of the internet and the limits of the selfie.

Another review at the Hollywood Reporter says the film tries to make a criticism of a culture that sexualizes young girls but doesn’t quite pull it off:

The bigger issue is that once the film establishes its critical view of a culture that steers impressionable young girls toward the hypersexualization of their bodies, it sets up a clash against traditional values that should provide a sturdy third act — particularly given the rich contextual potential to explore African identity in a Western European country. The elements are put in place, from Amy’s defiance, dishonesty and ruthless determination to participate in the contest at any price, to Aunty’s glowering condemnation and Mariam’s emotional crossroads as the wedding approaches. But Doucouré doesn’t quite thread those strands into a satisfying conclusion.

I haven’t seen the film but it’s hard to imagine how you could weave that into a satisfying conclusion. Making a coming of age film about pre-teens twerking which is also a criticism of the sexualization of young girls seems like a bad idea from the outset. Yes, it’s possible to make a war movie that is anti-war, one that doesn’t glamorize war but makes it ugly and pointless. But looking at the original poster for Cuties (that’s it above) or looking at the trailer, the film seems to be sending the opposite message, i.e. twerking as a path to personal liberation or as the new ad copy put it, building “confidence through dance.”

Yes, I’m aware that there are some pre-teen years for both boys and girls when efforts to transition from child to adult are painfully awkward. Anyone who remembers these years or is a parent has probably experienced some of this. And yes, that’s potentially a fine subject for a movie. But the fact remains that this is a piece of light entertainment featuring young girls twerking. Not all of the people who see this will be teens who relate sympathetically to the characters. I’ve heard feminists talk a lot about “the male gaze” but in this case shouldn’t there be some concern for the pedophile gaze?

Apparently Netflix isn’t worried about that but maybe it should be. The fact that its first effort at marketing this film resulted in sexualized images they had to apologize for should be a hint that there’s a deeper problem here. Here’s the trailer if you want to see it. It looks like The Full Monty with pre-teens to me. I like the Full Monty a lot but I think that film worked because it was about adults, not children.