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Cuties – Growing Up Fast

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Yes, Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties (Mignonnes) has created a great deal of controversy. I wouldn’t categorize that controversy as a tempest in a teapot, because the film does revolve around the sexualization of young women, but in a reflective and critical manner, not in an exploitive or abusive manner. In fact, the film suggests an outrage about this just as strong as the Twitterverse’s demands of boycott. The film, however, addresses the issue by asking us to empathize with the young characters, rather than turning away and ignoring what is happening.

Amy (Fathia Youssouf) is a Somalian immigrant living with her mother and two brothers in a poor section of Paris. They are observant Muslims, going to the women’s service at the mosque, hearing how evil it is for women to bare their bodies. Her father has returned to Somalia with plans to bring home a second wife. The planning for the wedding falls to Amy’s mother and the family matriarch. Amy is expected to participate, even though she feels abandoned and rejected.

 New in her middle school, she is attracted to a group of girls (Médina El Aidi-Azouni, Esther Gohourou, Ilanah Cami-Goursolas, and Myriam Hamma) who want to win a hip-hop dance contest. Amy begins to work her way into the group, and eventually begins dancing with them. Yes, the dances are mildly suggestive, but as Amy and the others begin to see other more risqué dancing videos online, Amy instigates making their dances even more so. When they begin posting their videos on social media, the affirmations are intoxicating. Here, Amy finds the kind of attention she misses at home.

Cuties is a painful coming-of-age story. At home, Amy has learned that in her world women are disposable. Even though she and her mother will still be in the home with her father and new wife, it is obvious that they are not enough. They are being relegated to second-class status. The worlds of the mosque, home, and society are acutely at odds.

A large part of that conflict involves the meaning of being a woman. At home Amy gets two lessons on womanhood. The first is when she has her first period, she is told she’s now a woman. The other lesson is when the matriarch tells her that the way to become a woman is to prepare the food for her father’s upcoming wedding. But society has many ways of teaching that women are sexualized, and the way to get approval and love is through that route. It is a lesson that young girls see often.

There are parts of this film that are hard to watch. The increasingly sexualized dancing is the film’s way of rubbing our noses in a culture that may not officially promote that behavior in children, but certainly is willing to tolerate it, possible even think it’s cute that they want to be so grown up. When Amy gets approval and affirmation along the way, she wants more. Eventually she will push too far.

It is also hard to watch the way Amy must deal with a life at home that will never be fulfilling. The place of women in her ethnic world is belittling. We don’t want that world for her any more than we do the sexualized world she is entering.

The film is about a world in which children (especially girls) are encouraged in many ways to grow up to fast. What “to grow up” means varies within cultures and societies. But adolescence is always a challenge for these children who face challenges of identity and belonging. Can we really expect eleven year olds to make the proper choices when faced with so many voices and images? The film serves as a strong reminder that left to their own choices, calamity is near at hand.

Finally, I want to address the widespread denunciation of the film by those who haven’t seen it. It’s my understanding that what created the controversy was an ill-advised publicity poster used by Netflix (which Netflix later apologized for and admitted was inappropriate). Certainly that poster gave an impression of the film that would suggest it would be offensive. But often posters (or even trailers) do not capture the reality of a film. The way the condemnation of the film went viral suggests that we live in a world in which people don’t want to make their own decision, but will just pass on what people who yell the loudest have to say. Cuties is actually a very clear indictment of a society that sexualizes children. That is the voice that needs to be heard.

Photo courtesy of Netflix.

The Cuban – Jazzy Memories

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“We can’t change the past. All we have left is our future.” The past and future are not so much what Sergio Navarretta’s The Cuban focuses on. Rather it calls us to find life in the present.

Mina (Ana Golja) is a young Afghan-Canadian pre-med student who is working at a nursing home. She is tasked with feeding one of the patients who has Alzheimer’s. Luis Garcia (Louis Gossett Jr.) spends his day staring blankly. Because he reacts violently in frustration, he doesn’t eat with the other residents. Mina notices a poster on his wall of a Cuban jazz musician. She remembers that music from her grandfather’s home when she was a child. She notes that as she hums music that Luis becomes a bit more animated. She begins to bring Cuban jazz records to play for him and each time he becomes more engaged. Soon she’s bringing him Cuban food as well. She’s skirting the rules, but it is paying off. She soon discovers that Luis was a famed Cuban musician.

But when we see Mina’s homelife with her aunt (Shohreh Aghdashloo), we discover that Mina is less interested in being a doctor than her aunt. It is the aunt’s dream that she expects Mina to live out. She is concerned about Mina’s future, but not with Mina’s desires. (Mina is more interested in music.) It is the aunt who voices the quote above. The aunt had been a doctor in Afghanistan, but now is an administrator at the nursing home. As an immigrant, she was not credentialed to practice medicine, but she did the best she could to provide a home and opportunity for Mina. She may feel a bit like a martyr for her sacrifice.

But the contrast is really when we see Mina’s relationship with Luis. Here is a man who has seemingly lost his past, and has no hope of a future. With neither, he is stuck in a present of emptiness. The music and food that Mina brings him begins to draw out his memories—some happy, some not. It is the interplay of Luis’s past and Mina’s possible future that creates a meaningful present.

The film is a little bit cluttered with side stories of Mina entering into a romance, and with battles with the nursing home staff (which are a bit stereotypical). Those subplots take away some needed exploration of Mina’s memories of her family and how that impacts her situation vis-à-vis her aunt.

The film does offer some wonderful bits of Cuban jazz. Some of those involve getting into Luis’s mind as the music awakens him, taking him back in time to New York clubs, and also cruising in Havana. The music adds a sense of joy and life to the film, that focuses so much on people who are stuck in a life that is not their choosing. But throughout the film we find that the music, so based in the past, is what brings meaning into the lives of these characters.

The Cuban is available on Virtual Cinema through local arthouses.

Photos courtesy of Brainstorm Media.

Hala – Between Two Worlds

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Hala is the story of a young woman caught between two world—her parents’ and the culture she has grown up in. It is a stereotypical coming-of-age story with the additional conflict of having to live by additional rules that grow out of her parents’ values. But it also turns into not just about her yearning for freedom, but also about what it means to be a woman in a male dominated society.

Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a Muslim high school student with Pakistani immigrant parents. Although she wears a hijab and covers her body, even in PE, she is very much a typical American teenager. She rides a skateboard. She is awakening sexually, but not sure what it means. She is good in school.

But her relationship with her parents is uneven. She is fairly close with her father (Azad Khan), but constantly in conflict with her mother (Purbi Joshi). Part of the tension derives from her father’s assimilation into American life (he’s a lawyer). He and Hala converse in English. The mother, although she understands English, always speak in Urdu. So when Hala and her mother speak it is clear that they are from different cultures. Her mother is trying to make sure she is brought up properly. Her father’s only concern is that she is staying away from boys.

Of course, she has been crushing on Jesse (Jack Kilmer), a boy at school and the skateboard park. As their relationship grows, Hala keeps it secret, sneaking out to meet him. One day with Jesse, she sees her father and discovers his secret, which devastates her opinion of him. Her sexual awakening grows, but not in satisfactory ways.

When an issue arises with a teacher (Hala’s fault) and her parents are called to school, the conflict escalates within the household. It is now her mother who gives voice to Hala’s needs, while her father has become the adversary. In time Hala must find a synthesis that will allow her to remain faithful to her religious values, but also experience the freedom that American society offers. The film’s final scene gives us an idea that she is beginning to find a blend of the two cultures which will be more acceptable to her.

Director Minhal Baig steers the viewer in how to understand what is going one, at times a bit heavy-handedly. When we see Hala in school, it is in her English class where they are given an assignment to write an essay featuring a point of view. (That concept comes up a few other times in the film.) This film is clearly from Hala’s point of view. We don’t get the perspective of her parents, or of the teacher involved, or even Jesse. It is all focused on Hala’s needs, desires, and decisions. That is, of course, what makes for a coming-of-age story. That singular point of view is appropriate for that age, but it also makes the story a bit more shallow than it could be.

The more explicit way we are instructed how to read this film is by Hala’s identification with Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which she is assigned to read in school. The lack of freedom for women that Ibsen described in that play continues to be felt by many today, especially in some ethnic/religious settings. We could easily see Hala as an updated reimaging of Ibsen’s work.

One aspect of the perspective of this film that should be noted is that it seems to assume a superiority of American culture over the cultural values her parents bring with them. We know all through the film that this is about Hala’s struggle for freedom—especially freedom as it is seen in our culture. Perhaps there is (or is not) a superiority to our culture. But the presentation of her parents’ cultural values seems a bit dismissive, as if we will naturally see it as wrong-headed and backwards. Perhaps the real answer for Hala is not to win her freedom, but to find the best of all the values to incorporate into her life.

Monday at AFIFest 2019

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Fifty-one percent of the films at AFI Fest 2019 Presented by Audi are directed by women. In the lobby of the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres where most of the screenings take place stands a large installation entitled “Changing the Chairs”, noting that who sits in the director’s chair makes a difference, and celebrating that more women are now getting the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is mostly known for his work in Japanese horror films, but his film To the Ends of the Earth was undertaken to celebrate the friendship between Japan and Uzbekistan. Yoko (Atsuko Maeda) is a Japanese TV reporter doing a bit of a travelogue of Uzbekistan. She and her crew go to various places in the country looking for interesting stories. During the off hours, she wanders through unfamiliar streets where no one speaks her language. Her anxieties and loneliness begin to take a toll. The film serves as a bit of an introduction to Uzbekistan, but as Yoko discovers, getting to know a country isn’t really the same unless you meet the people as well.

Hala from writer/director Minhal Baig, is a coming-of-age story of a young woman from a Pakistani immigrant family. Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a senior in high school, but her parents’ conservative values do not fit with the world she lives in. She begins seeing a non-Muslim boy. She sneaks out. But it becomes more complicated when she discovers a secret about her father, with whom she has been close. Her life seems to be shadowing Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which she is studying in school. It is not just about finding herself, but about her mother also finding herself. And about finding a synthesis between her parents’ world and her own. It’s not the first film I’ve seen about young Muslim women struggling in western culture. But it is a well done film that left me pulling at threads and then noting that perhaps it wasn’t unraveling after all. (For a film to stay with you after you’ve watched it is a good thing, especially if you think better of it as time goes along.) Hala will open in select theaters on Friday and will stream at AppleTV+ in December.

Capernaum – Chaos or Miracles

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How does one survive without being “officially” a person? For people such as refugees or the poor, there may be no paper trail of their existence. In Capernaum, from Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, we see a boy struggle with life in that kind of world.

Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) is about twelve years old (based on a doctor’s physical exam), but looks younger. His family can’t provide for him or his sister. Soon they arrange for his sister’s marriage (at fourteen) and in anger Zain leaves to live in the streets. He is resourceful and determined. Soon he his taken in by Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw), an Ethiopian refugee without proper work papers. Zain becomes a caregiver and provider for her and her baby son Yonas. Zain survives by his street smarts, but when Rahil is arrested Zain’s resources become vary scarce as he tries to care for Yonas on his own. After Zain is arrested for a serious crime, he ends up in court where he demands justice, suing his parents for bringing him into this world.

I’ve seen two of Labaki’s previous films (Caramel and Where Do We Go Now?). Both are lighthearted with a bit of bite. They deal with women finding empowerment. Capernaum is a much different kind of film. It is about those who have no power and little chance at empowerment. It makes it clear that for people such as these, no help can be forthcoming without some sort of paper that proves you exist. The film portrays these people with dignity. The film is especially focused on children in this plight. It makes it painfully clear that these are people like us, but who are trapped by systems that make them invisible and powerless. This vision of humanity led to the film winning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes.

Labaki used many non-professional actors in making this film in order to have their true reactions. Many of those in the film actually lead lives such as we see on screen. There are refugees and undocumented people. Often she would describe a scene for them and let them play it out in their own words and emotions. This brings a sense of realism into the story. The kinds of heartbreak that we see onscreen are daily lives for many.

In production notes for the film, Labaki says the title comes from the French word “capharnaüm” which translates as “chaos”. She also notes that it is the name of a biblical city, which was “a place where miracles could happen.” She goes on to say, “That’s what’s going on in the world right now. It’s a mixture of chaos and miracles every day.” It is interesting to look at the film with those two concepts in mind. We can ask ourselves where we see the miracles in Zain and Rahil’s world? There is hope in the film, but it is certainly elusive. But the very idea of having hope in such a dark world could be a miracle itself.

Capernaum has been nominated for a Golden Globe and is Lebanon’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar consideration.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics