The film is a coming-of-age story of a girl caught between cultures and age.

Eleven-year-old Senegalese immigrant Amy (Fathia Youssouf) reckons there are two ways to be a woman. Amy could mimic her mom (Maimouna Gueye), a dutiful drudge with three kids and a husband who’s just announced he’s bringing home a second wife. Or she could copy the “Cuties,” a quartet of brazen girls who wear tube tops to class, screech “Freedom!” in the hallways, and rehearse their dance crew after school. Either way, the new-in-town 6th grader is ready to select a lane and speed toward maturity.

To writer-director Maimouna Doucoure, the choice is simple. Her drama starts with Amy doodling stick figures and climaxes with the kid twerking in hot pants. Doucoure believes that today’s girls see their options in black and white. The film’s job is to coil the contrasting messages and spin them until her lead falls down dizzy, which can make the film feel as subtle as a headache.

“Cuties” is an extension of Doucoure’s 2016 Cesar- and Sundance-winning short “Maman(s),” about an 8-year-old child furious when her polygamous dad invites his new bride into their Parisian apartment. The two movies share the same powerful shot of the mother weeping when she thinks she’s alone, not realizing her daughter is hidden under the bed and staring at her ankles.

Aging her lead character three years allows the first-time feature director to explore the contradictions of being 11, an age just old enough that you want to be older, yet so young that “older” means pretending to be 14. Amy’s worldly new friends don’t yet know how much they don’t know. Not only does Coumba (Esther Gohourou) mistake a condom for a balloon, after she blows it up, the other girls panic that she’s probably going to die. In the movie’s funniest gag, they frantically scrub Coumba’s mouth with soap. To be 11 means attempting to simultaneously prove you’re a kid and a grownup, and failing at both. When the gang sneaks into a laser-tag playroom, they try to intimidate the security guard by accusing him of pedophilia, and cap off their attack with the dizzying threat, “We’re children. We’ll call our lawyers!”

Newcomer Youssouf has an anchoring presence. Occasionally, Doucoure lets her light up the screen with a smile, and at the director’s most expressionistic, the girl floats. Yann Maritaud’s cinematography is rich with jewel tones, especially in a blue and red beaded dress made for Amy to wear to her father’s wedding.

Perhaps the most important message of “Cuties” is that no matter what Amy says or does, she’s still just an 11-year-old girl. People are quick to judge her for trying to act like an adult, but really, all she wants is to feel cool and fit in. She wants to be liked, and what person who survived middle school couldn’t identify with that? She thought the way to do that was to emulate others. Instead, she becomes a cautionary tale in the process.(SD-Agencies)