#Maïmouna Doucouré

[oldfilmsflicker]

Hawa, 2022 (dir. Maïmouna Doucouré)

[jotarokujo19]

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

My Top 10 of 2022

Fire of Love dir. Sara Dosa

Aftersun dir. Charlotte Wells

Happening dir. Audrey Diwan 

The Woman King dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood

Neptune Frost dir. Anisia Uzeyman & Saul Williams

Emily dir. Frances O’Connor 

Corsage dir. Marie Kreutzer

Bodies Bodies Bodies dir. Halina Reijn

Hawa dir. Maïmouna Doucouré

Mr. Malcolm's List dir. Emma Holly Jones

Honourable mention:

Catherine Called Birdy dir. Lena Dunham, Causeway dir. Lila Neugebauer, Don't Worry Darling dir. Olivia Wilde, The Eternal Daughter dir. Joanna Hogg, Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul dir. Adamma Ebo

[pablolf]

Film Journal

"Cuties" by Maïmouna Doucouré

[gaboninfoslive]

Cinéma : Le Jury Un Certain Regard du 77e Festival de Cannes

L’acteur, réalisateur, scénariste et producteur canadien Xavier Dolan sera le Président du Jury Un Certain Regard du 77e Festival de Cannes. Il sera entouré de la scénariste et réalisatrice franco-sénégalaise Maïmouna Doucouré, de la réalisatrice, scénariste et productrice marocaine Asmae El Moudir, de l’actrice germano-luxembourgeoise Vicky Krieps, et du critique de cinéma, réalisateur et…

[ptbf2002]

Jenny Wakeman Facepalms Over Cuties

Original Template: https://www.deviantart.com/daydreaming-mad-dog/art/Jenny-Wakeman-is-Upset-Over-What-665840038

My Life as a Teenage Robot Belongs To Rob Renzetti, Rough Draft Studios, Inc. Frederator Studios, Frederator Networks, Inc. Wow Unlimited Media Inc. Nelvana Enterprises Inc. Corus Entertainment Inc. Nickelodeon Animation Studios, Nickelodeon Productions, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons, Nickelodeon Group, Paramount Global Content Distribution, Paramount International Networks, Paramount Domestic Media Networks, Paramount Media Networks, Inc. And Paramount Global

Cuties Belongs To Maïmouna Doucouré, Bien ou Bien Productions, France 3 Cinéma, France Télévisions S.A. Ciné+, CANAL+ S.A. Groupe CANAL+ S.A. Vivendi SE, BAC Films, And Netflix, Inc.

[oldfilmsflicker]

This week's newsletter includes a look at Maïmouna Doucouré’s latest film, which was unceremoniously dumped on Prime today, plus seven more streaming picks.

[hardtowatch]

Cuties, and what it means to be seen

By the time you could watch it on Netflix, heated controversy had already brought notoriety to Cuties. A botched marketing poster and a viral clip had eclipsed the entire film. I watched it early, as the call to cancel Netflix subscriptions due to the film’s content was so loud that I felt there was a real chance that the platform would pull the movie (Netflix, to its credit, stood by the film and its director for the entirety of this fallout).

The claim: Netflix is promoting child pornography by showing pre-teen girls performing highly sexualized dance moves.

The counter: Cuties is a film that criticizes a culture that sexualizes children.  

It’s true that the things that upset people about this film are the same things that necessitate its message, but Cuties is much more than political shock art. It is first and foremost a personal coming of age story from director Maïmouna Doucouré, who drew from her experience as a child of Senegalese immigrant parents growing up in France. Her story is at the heart of this movie, and it’s something to keep in mind when we watch Amy, the 11-year old protagonist of Cuties, as she tries to exist in the uncomfortable realm between girlhood and womanhood. 

Like all girls this age, Amy is astute enough to perceive what’s going on with the adults around her. When she observes the purity culture in which her mother and aunt are attempting to raise her, she begins looking for other examples of what adulthood might look like. In an early scene, Amy longingly glances at her brother who is playing and horsing around while she is forced to attend women’s prayers. Later, she gives this same jealous glance to the popular girls practicing dance moves at her school. 

Cuties explores a time in childhood where becoming an adult seems to be the most freeing possibility, but you’ve yet to understand the tools you need to accomplish it. Amy in particular is seeking tools to liberate herself from what feels like an oppressive fate as she watches her mother pretend not to be in pain at the thought of her husband bringing home a new wife. The tools that Amy finds are commonplace for most children: new peers, an after-school activity, social media, and all of the pitfalls that accompany it. The first time Amy posts a photo of herself online, it feels revelatory. Showing her face in this new way is a form of ownership and autonomy she has not experienced before, and as she receives a heart reaction, it’s like watching someone take the first hit of a drug. It’s a new form of currency.

This currency - being seen, being desired, being on exhibit for the approval of others - is the crux of Cuties and a large part of what upsets people about it. Amy and her new group of friends choreograph their dance based on hip hop music videos they have seen on their phones, and they perform with the brazen fearlessness of teen girls who have just discovered a superpower. Their confidence is intoxicating, and Amy latches onto it with the desperation of someone who fears she has no other options.

The girls, of course, do not understand this superpower, only that it is powerful. Cuties is very much about using sex appeal to feel grown up despite not understanding its consequences. Similar to how boys playact war (in games and in Hollywood), girls too will look at the world we have built for them and respond in kind. What does power look like for a woman? What do we tell girls when they ask us for help? Dancing is a form of joy or play. It is not inherently sexual, just like young girls and their bodies are not inherently sexual. It is the rest of the world that thrusts sexuality upon them before they know how to use it. If you give a young girl no resources to navigate the world, then of course they are going to make do with what they have. Amy’s actual power is her quiet observation, and it’s this skill - observing the world around her - that leads to her incorporating risque dance moves into her act.

Any time we are faced with shocking or upsetting content in art we should start by asking: “Was this made in good faith?” If the answer for Cuties is yes, then we owe it to the storyteller to give it the same chance we give to countless movies that show young men engaging in violence and war. An artist must be careful when using content that could potentially be harmful to people. Doucouré, like all auteurs, is very, very intentional in her filmmaking. It’s not a coincidence that the title - “cutie” - is a word that people use for a dog they want to cuddle, but also a word they use for a person they want to fuck. 

The incongruence is jarring. Doucouré continually reminds us that these characters are just children. As they pound gummi candies into their mouths, as they shriek when they find a condom, as they accidentally humiliate themselves with language, objects, and actions they do not comprehend, their defiance is so confident. It is the opposite of what Amy has witnessed from the women in her own home, and Cuties is at its ugliest any time Amy’s newfound freedom is threatened. When the other girls try to exclude her or when someone tries to take her phone away, she lashes out. Horrified at her behavior, Amy’s mother asks at one point, “Who are you, Amy?” For the whole movie, Amy has been asking “What choices do I have?” 

How do you become a woman? How do you navigate growing up into something that is loathed, feared, put on a pedestal, and objectified? The fact is that young girls do regularly have to tackle adult issues of womanhood long before they are ready, and when they do, they have no choice but to take their cues from the adults around them. Doucouré is showing us this reckoning through the lens of a young Muslim girl, and Cuties tells her story well. 

What might it look like for a young girl to have power that isn’t pulled from a poisonous culture? The closing shot of the film shows Amy jumping rope, and the image is a bit too idyllic, giving no space for the realistic ramifications of what has just transpired in the movie. But it is a moment of relief in a movie that’s been very stressful, making Cuties less a lecture on sexualizing children than a story for young women to see themselves represented. Women who perhaps had to recognize their power only after first being harmed by the way the world sees them. This is not a film for people who think it’s OK to sexualize young women, but rather, a film for women who have suffered and who might feel validated by seeing this story told. People think the content is meant to shock you into being horrified at our culture. And sure, it is. But it is also meant for women who have encountered this story and who have been harmed by this narrative. It’s meant to recognize the stories they have lived through.

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

Writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré announces development of a Josephine Baker biopic!

[entomologistologist]

I’m thinking about Cuties and just getting more and more mad. I hate the new narrative that Netflix is the bad guy and the director Maïmouna Doucouré is the victim. You know who the real victims are? The extremely young child actresses who were way too young to understand the implications of being in this film.

I don’t care if the French movie poster looked innocent and the Netflix poster looked depraved. What matters the most is the ACTUAL MOVIE, and the actual movie that Doucouré directed exploited actual children.

And this is never, ever going to go away. Even if Netflix eventually takes the movie down. These child actresses were told by adults to twerk on camera and to mimic sexual acts, and that’s gonna be on the internet forever. The scene where one child exposes her bare breast will be saved and the clip will be circulated around the internet forever. The scene where a girl’s leather pants get pulled down and her panty-clad butt is shown will be saved and circulated around the internet forever.

Netflix is at fault. The director is at fault. These actresses’ guardians are at fault. Every adult who allowed this to happen is at fault. It literally doesn’t matter if the moral of the story is that sexualizing children is bad, because the creators of the movie sexualized and exploited children.

The damage isn’t just limited to the little girls in the movie, of course. They’re the main victims, but broadcasting the sexualization of children endangers children everywhere. I have no sympathy for Doucouré, for the people at Netflix and Sundance who agreed to show this film, or for any of the other adults responsible for this monstrosity.

[thundergrace]

My goodness!!! The film hasn't been released! They didn't even see it! All Netflix did was market it poorly (okay, it was gross). These people's actions are on THEM! They had a knee-jerk reaction to said marketing but they should've looked into what the film is actually about and who made it. This was an absurd reaction.

[jellyfax]

The Cyclical Abuse of Black Children by Black Adults: “Cuties”

It's troubling that a good number of black adults from famed actress Tessa Thompson to up-and-coming YouTube video essayist Khadija Mbowe seem to mostly approve of the film Cuties. They're all like "the scenes of the children being sexualized were bad, BUT the message was great, so in a way that sexual exploitation was justified. Cuties is a powerful, provocative misunderstood film that resonates with me and reflects my childhood experiences!" It really epitomizes just how black adults, in this case primarily black women, will shove their trauma onto black children excepting them to deal with it and treat them like tools to vicariously replay their trauma through for catharsis. Then, they'll wonder why our kids are so pressured to grow up so quickly, abused like sex objects, and are never truly allowed to have childhoods.

The sexual exploitation of the children in Cuties killed the film and its message. It sought to denounce the sexualization of girls of color, particularly black girls, and just replicated that abuse. It was a failed, flawed venture and should be acknowledged as such. The director, Maïmouna Doucouré, failed in her message for the film likely for that kind of attitude that I described above. She and other people, including black adults praising this film, need to stop selfishly putting their trauma before children. A film's message and the feelings of adults should never outweigh children's safety.

I sincerely hope that the child actors in Cuties are alright and healing from all the pain that they had been put through by the public, their parents, and everyone involved in the making, production, distribution, and advertising of Cuties.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Cuties (2020)

The controversy surrounding Cuties (French: Mignonnes) is doubly-frustrating. Firstly, Netflix shouldn't have advertised it like it did. Secondly, because it threatens to turn audiences away from this nuanced and emotional coming-of-age story filled with excellent performances.

Eleven-year-old immigrant Amy (Fathia Youssouf) is often left on her own while her mother Mariam (Maïmouna Gueye) deals with her two younger brothers and absent father. At school, she spots a group of disobedient girls called “The Cuties”. They dress like the women they see in music videos and are obsessed with an upcoming dance competition. In her quest to fit in with them, Amy grows increasingly distant from her family.

French writer/director Maïmouna Doucouré (in a spectacular debut) knows what she’s doing because she draws from real life. Amy’s new friends Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni), Coumba (Esther Gohourou), Jess (Ilanah Cami-Goursolas), and Yasmine (Myriam Hamma) are only imitating what they see other women do. Is it their fault music videos so frequently zoom in on belly buttons, breasts, and arched backs? What did you expect them to do? Cuties deliberately makes you uncomfortable with long shots that show them practicing their moves as they prepare for the big show. It’s so creepy I kept thinking the police were going to barge in and arrest me. That’s the point.

And then suddenly the girls pause their obsession with adulthood. They giggle as they theorize how babies are made, have gummy bear-eating competitions, and demonstrate the importance of friendship by sharing their insecurities. You get a glimpse of what their childhood SHOULD be like. It’s not their fault they’re dressing and acting inappropriately. They don't know better, which makes you think long and hard about what responsibilities we have towards this next generation of women.

Like we’ve seen so often before, Amy’s misbehavior is caused by what’s happening at home. Her strict Muslim aunt whose little comments about what society expects of women, the lack of supervision, and more than anything else, her absent father’s actions. You so desperately want Amy to turn out OK but she keeps making all of these bad decisions and mistakes. Hopefully, she learns from them in time. If not, you don’t know what you’ll do.

The performances are so natural Cuties often feels more like a documentary than a drama. All the details are perfect. The jokes the girls tell, the way bullying is portrayed, the way they react to big issues, or ignore them completely because they’re too young to understand what’s happening. It’s addressing the issues we face here and now but this story is universal. It'll remain truthful even after we finally figure out at what age it’s appropriate to give kids smartphones and internet access.

Maïmouna Doucouré has made a film that's often uncomfortable and difficult to watch. Trust in it. Stick with it. In the end, the emotions converge, and Cuties leaves you enlightened and elated while still melancholic. This one will be hard to forget. (Original French version, September 9, 2020)

[zalrb]

Mignonnes is a good movie. Are there aspects of it that are meant to be deeply uncomfortable? Yes. Are there aspects of it that made me cringe? Absolutely. I think there could be a healthy debate regarding whether or not the dancing scenes end up becoming the very thing Doucouré criticizes, as it is a debut film and it’s not a perfect one by any means. That said, I think she tapped into the uncomfortable nuances of that stage of girlhood where girls imitate/replicate sexualized images they don’t fully understand because those images are packaged to them --- and therefore they view them as claiming a sense of freedom or agency or identity, and she does it without judging the characters or without the message being delivered in a sanctimonious tone and she does it in real time, we experience these things as Amy experiences them, there isn’t the comfort of retrospection so everything is uncomfortable because we know better whereas Amy and the others don’t.

[moviemosaics]

Cuties

directed by Maïmouna Doucouré, 2020