Time September 21/September 28, 2020picture that seeks both to entertain and
provoke, rather than to simply punish
its audience. Some of Antebellum’s more
brutal scenes are difficult to watch, but
most of its violence is blunt, righteous
and gratifying. And in the midst of the
story’s sobering ambience, Bush and
Renz know the value of a well-placed
joke: when a white restaurant hostess
shows Veronica and her party to the
worst table in the house, her best friend,
played by Gabourey Sidibe, sets the
woman straight and then fumes behind
her back, “The caucasity!”
It’s Monáe, though, always as elec-
trifying an actor as she is a singer, who
sets the film ablaze. Veronica’s boldness
doesn’t vanish when she’s forced into
the role of Eden; it lies in wait, coiled
like a cobra. “They’re stuck in the past.
We are the future,” Veronica says to a
group of Black women gathered to hear
her speak, but the line belongs to all of
history’s Edens, too. Monáe speaks for
them as well, in a story where ghosts
triumph not just over the past, but also
over an insidiously threatening present.ANTEBELLUM streams on various
platforms beginning Sept. 18even if we didn’T live in a coun-
try where a shockingly large fraction of
people think Confederate monuments
are A-O.K., Gerard Bush and Christo-
pher Renz’s Antebellum would resonate
like the boom of a Union Army cannon.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you already
know the twist: Janelle Monáe plays a
slave named Eden on a plantation some-
where, ostensibly, in the Civil War–era
South. Escape from the property—
overseen by a cruel Confederate general
(Eric Lange)—is impossible. Worse yet,
there’s no escape from this life, which
isn’t Eden’s real life at all. She’s really
Veronica Henley, a successful sociolo-
gist and writer with a loving husband
and daughter. For reasons Veronica
can’t comprehend, she’s been dropped
into a nightmare that looks an awful lot
like real-life American history.
Even if Antebellum’s trailer gives the
game away, it still holds the movie’s most
effective secrets close. The opening is
magisterial and chilling, a sweeping shot
that captures both the grand beauty of
the Southern landscape and the savage
horror of these characters’ altered lives.
Bush and Renz keep careful control
over the tone: this is a tense, thoughtful
REVIEW
Dancing way
too fastin french direcTor
Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties,
an 11-year-old French girl
from an upright Senegalese
Muslim family, Amy ( Fathia
Youssouf), becomes en-
tranced with a group of girls
who have formed a dance
troupe, eager to show off
their skills at an upcoming
competition. They rebuff
her at first—Amy is shy and
retreating. Then she picks
up some racy moves from
grownup dancers in music
videos, earning the group’s
dubious approval.
Cuties—originally titled
Mignonnes—earned Dou-
couré a directing award at
Sundance earlier this year,
though it has since drawn
controversy over fears that
it sexualizes young girls. But
that view of Cuties misses the
point: eager impatience to be-
come a woman is part of girl-
hood, a stage that Doucouré
explores with honesty and in-
tegrity. For Amy, woman hood
represents the promise of
having some control over her
life. Little wonder she’s rush-
ing toward it. Only grownups
know how fleeting childhood
really is. —S.Z.CUTIES streams on
Netflix beginning Sept. 9REVIEW
Slavery’s horror, played
out in the present
By Stephanie Zacharek
TimeOff Movies
ANTEBELLUM: MATT KENNEDY—LIONSGATE; CUTIES: NETFLIX
△
Youssouf, right, as Amy:
rushing toward womanhood△
Monáe carries the torch, and she knows how to use it