Titel: Mignonnes | Cuties | Die Süßen
Freshly arrived in a new, rather modest looking apartment, Amy (Fathia Youssouf) and her little brother are getting into each other’s hair. However, they stop in front of a big white room, but don’t enter it. When the mother joins them to look for the reason for the noise of her children, she sees the open room and closes its door with the words, nobody enters this room and nobody will get it, you have to share your room. When Amy inspects the house a little bit in a happy minute, she comes across another girl in the laundry room, who is dancing with full physical effort while she is doing the laundry. Amy is visibly fascinated by the dance steps and continues to watch the scene until she is discovered and therefore runs away in shame. The next morning Amy goes alone to the new school. In the schoolyard she is immediately welcomed by a headmistress who quickly instructs her which class she should go to. Meanwhile something strange happens in the background. All the children in the schoolyard are frozen at once. The headmistress is visibly annoyed by the action and tries to stop the flash mob of the children, with slight success. Only four girls are left behind, who are immediately summoned to the office. Amy has also recognized one of the girls, the one from the laundry room the day before. The four girls (played by Ilanah Cami-Goursolas, Esther Gohourou, Médina El Aidi-Azouni) have set themselves an ambitious goal, they want to perform as the group “Cuties” at a dance competition, they have a role model here, which they follow on YouTube, but which they also see as strong competition. While the girls rehearse their performance with loud music at a somewhat hidden place, Amy accidentally comes across the group again after a joint shopping trip with her brother and secretly observes them until she is noticed again, which the girls acknowledge with loud protest and a targeted stone throw. Back at school they give Amy a hard time, amuse themselves about the wound… Only Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni) shows interest in Amy and protects her a little, because she recognizes Amy from the laundry room.
From now on the very lively girls spend more time together and Amy starts to turn her life upside down to become even more popular in the clique. Unexpectedly, a second construction site opens up for Amy, because she overhears a phone call from her mother, from which it is clear that her husband has found a new wife to marry and, according to an old custom, he will move into the empty room after the wedding, which makes the mother a second wife. The mother had hid this fact from Amy and when the father finally shows up for the move, she is not very positive about him. She courageously steals his smartphone from the car during the move, which she now uses to secretly watch YouTube dance videos in the bathroom. She learns choreographies and creates a profile for herself in a social network, where she begins to stage herself. In the end she scores well with the girls group and even manages to teach the others new dance steps. However, the girls have no experience of where there should be certain boundaries for children and there is no adult to accompany them, which ends up making her chosen choreographies look frighteningly erotic. The girls are so convinced of themselves that they want to outdo their role models in the competition, that they keep on going and crossing more and more boundaries, always accompanied by self-made photos or videos to get the reactions of others. Also Amy becomes more and more radical and even makes sure that a girl leaves the group and later on sometimes starts a fight with her. The attention is certain to her, but the price is high in the end.
Conclusion:
As adults we have the gift of taking care of ourselves. For this purpose our parents have accompanied us and raised us. We know what does us good and what can harm us and we act accordingly. As a child, however, we still need this protection, which Amy lacks, because her mother is afflicted with completely different concerns. Mignonnes tries to transport these aspects in a very tough way, by seeing things that many children do today to get as close as possible to their personal role models or even surpass them. The typical patterns of glossy models on magazines or in advertisements have long since been overtaken by the digital and fast moving world on the internet, which has become conveniently accessible for everyone and is even child’s play to use thanks to smartphones or tablets. All of this is what this movie tries to make clear in a very spasmodic way, yet forgets to go into the possible consequences and the final picture of the movie leaves you with the belief that the world is now completely ok for Amy again and that everything that happened has been wiped away. However, if you also take into account the cultural aspects shown here, the main character has basically submitted to the constraints again in order to finally be happy. That seems strange, because those very cultural constraints were questioned several times by their growing rebellious behavior. The movie is violent, it shocks, it hurts and it shows what can be reality today and that we also have to virtually accompany our children, but sadly the red thread is missing for many of the situations and in some situations it leaves the viewer completely alone with his interpretation of what was shown for a fraction of the time. If this is really a suitable children’s movie then, everyone has to decide for himself. The age recommendation of 12 years is quite reasonable here. By the way, this work is a production of Netflix, so the film will certainly be released there.
Actors:
- Fathia Youssouf (Amy)
- Médina El Aidi-Azouni (Angelica)
- Esther Gohourou (Coumba)
- Ilanah Cami-Goursolas (Jess)
- Myriam Hamma (Yasmine)
- Demba Diaw (Ismael)
- Mbissine Thérèse Diop (Tante)
- Mamadou Samaké (Samba)
- Bilel Chegrani (Clement W.)
Director:
Maïmouna Doucouré
Information about the film including a short film excerpt:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/programm/detail.html?film_id=202011923
