Cute ½

As a story with a pedophile parent as its main character—with whom the audience is apparently supposed to empathize, at least that is what the director and co-writer does—Marlene Emilie Lyngstad‘s speculative psychopathological portrait is, of course, anything but the titular term. Nevertheless, it’s fitting, since “cute” is the first thing that comes to mind, in a decidedly derisive tone, in the face of the sensationalist story’s attempts at being provocative. The commercially advantageous seal is almost guaranteed for a drama giving a podium to perversion, as it’s represented by the outwardly unremarkable protagonist Richard (Jan Gunnar Røise). He is the father of a little daughter whom he hardly knows—thankfully, since Richard sexually desires children.

His relationship with an adult woman about the same age as he is a necessary part of the facade he keeps up while secretly getting off on family videos of little girls—or, in one scene designed to be particularly unpleasant, to a phone call from his daughter. She would like to meet the father she hardly knows, and whose sexual aberration has so far been a well-guarded secret. The dramatic dialectic suggests that the protagonist is more to be pitied than judged, since he isn’t seen acting on his desires. But nothing in the scenario, circling voyeuristically and nauseatingly around his perverse fantasies, suggests he hasn’t or wouldn’t if he had the opportunity.

The latter literally presents itself through his 7-year-old daughter, Ea (Molly Kirk Rasmussen), and the question of “Will he or won’t he?” is incessantly milked for sickening suspense. But because this isn’t enough to fill the 106-minute running time, Lyngstad pairs Richard with a young woman who is presented as the perfect partner and his psychological and moral equal. Said comparison is almost as problematic as suggesting that pedophile parents would be the real victims, and reveals the narrative’s grotesque moralist contradictions. Stella (Gina Jaqueline) is the caregiver of Richard’s elderly mother and works as a cam girl, specializing in Lolita fetish.

They both have an instant psychosexual connection because the plot equates sex work with actual sexual desires. Lyngstad gets sex work wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start. She suggests sex workers like Stella are mentally unstable and self-destructive: they are keen to tempt younger girls onto their own path, as Stella does with her little sister, they are prone to toxic relationships, and their profession is an inherently perverted sphere, executed by perverts and catering to even worse perverts. Knowing that a man with pedophilic inclinations desires her allows Stella to revel in her own fantasies of having a childlike body. 

There is hardly any development, neither of characters nor of the storyline. Most of the scenes show Stella and Richard at sexual role‑play, with her impersonating his daughter whom he has to bathe, dress, or help brush her teeth. Much like Richard, Stella remains a one‑dimensional foil of reactionary resentment of sex workers; objectified by the camera and the narrative, and at the same time judged for supposedly encouraging this objectification. Thomas Dyrholm’s cinematography is as deliberately off‑putting as the characters, peeking into the twisted secrets people hide in their cluttered, narrow apartment flats. The result claims to interrogate exploitation while constantly making exploitation its principal aesthetic attraction.

The mise‑en‑scène consciously adopts Richard’s perspective by reproducing the aesthetic and concepts associated with his desire. Thus, discomfort serves as a shallow substitute for psychological tension and sociological depth. There is no attempt to look at the causes of pedophilia, possible treatments, or social strategies to deal with it. Proximity is presented as insight and crudeness as cinematic courage, when in fact the refusal to actually engage with the complicated subject is a sign of dramatic cowardice.