Cuties – A Review Wishing You a Successful Adolescence

Among the tasks we each face in adolescence: we try to find our individual identity, that of a former child on the path to becoming a uniquely human person. We distance ourselves to be distinct from family expectations. Yet we often succumb to social pressures, conforming to the behaviors of some peer group instead.

In short: successful adolescence emerges from being molded to familial expectations without being submerged in societal expectations.

Even shorter: successful adolescence is the process of learning to be you.

Many of us never get there (as evidenced by so much angry ignorance being spouted against a film by people who have admittedly never watched it).

In the film Cuties, our protagonist Ami is precocious in making this adolescent transition. She is aware at an earlier age of the damage inflicted by her family’s shallow adherence to the behaviors of their faith. That faith is portrayed as being exploited in order to exploit the women at the center of Ami’s home. But this no-longer-a-child accommodates better than the adults around her the resulting neglect, dysfunction, and shaming. Her efforts even force her to endure an examination for demonic influence, after which the local clergyman pronounces the accusation as unfounded.

Meanwhile, Ami seeks acceptance through conformity to a popular group of girls at school, mastering their juvenile dance moves, then mentoring them in furthering their ambitions: to reflect in their eleven-year-old performances the highly sexualized routines she finds online. The forces of peer pressure, entertainment industries, and social media are shown as constantly pushing the envelope, expanding the horizons, encroaching the boundaries, and trespassing the sensibilities of those who have gone before. It seems clear that all the girls are unaware of the message communicated by the gestures and postures they mimic…until Ami finally understands what others see her body saying.

Spoiler alert: Ami succeeds in the primary task of adolescence. She appears to recognize the same underlying pressures in both systems pulling at her. She not only withdraws from the peer pressure, she rejects the faith-exploiting ritual in which her family engages. And in doing so, she finds an ally to support her, though this occurs a generation later than the viewer might have hoped.

But have no doubts: Ami is a catalyst. Not just in reflecting the exploitation of her family’s faith. Not just in rejecting the sources of social patterning. But in reminding the viewer that we each have the opportunity to view and experience the world as a unique individual. To do so, we must separate from what our family tells us to be. We must separate from what society tells us to be. And we must certainly separate from the opinions of those willing to judge what they will not see.