On September 9, Netflix is scheduled to premiere a French film titled, Mignonnes, or Cuties in English. According to the New York Post, the film is about “a young girl who joins a dance troupe” which also consists of more young girls who “dance seductively” within the film.
After a poster for the movie was made public, people called for Netflix to avoid streaming the movie on their platform as many believed the suggestive nature of the poster promoted the sexualization of children. However, in a statement later shared by Netflix, the poster is not representative of the movie as a whole.
Netflix Apologizes for ‘Cuties’ Poster, But People Still Aren’t Satisfied.
Now, the poster, which showed the young actresses in cropped uniforms while posing, has since been deleted. “We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for ‘Cuties.’ It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film, which premiered at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description,” a spokesperson for the streaming service told Deadline in response to the backlash.
However, people still aren’t satisfied, saying that poster wasn’t the only problem wrong with this movie.
“Changing the description won’t change what is on screen,” one person said of the statement on Twitter. “If the original description was accurate, the whole thing needs to burn.”
“Exploiting children, and I cannot stress this enough Netflix, is NOT ‘creative freedom,'” another Twitter user replied.
As the New York Post previously reported, prior to Netflix’s statement, more than 30,000 people signed a petition on Change.org asking the streaming service to remove Cuties from the platform. The French film was written and directed by Maïmouna Doucouré. According to the Post, she won the jury award at Sundance for directing the movie.
Doucouré explained that the inspiration for the film in an interview with ScreenDaily. She said the premise of the movie came to her after watching an amateur talent show in Paris. “There were these girls on stage dressed in a really sexy fashion in short, transparent clothes. They danced in a very sexually suggestive manner. There also happened to be a number of African mothers in the audience. I was transfixed, watching with a mixture of shock and admiration. I asked myself if these young girls understood what they were doing.”
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The director said she spent a year prior to creating the movie interviewing young performers to find out the answer to that question.