This is not a film designed for entertainment or easy emotional catharsis. It is a deeply uncomfortable character study that places audiences in proximity to behaviour most people would rather not contemplate.

There are films that challenge audiences, and then there are films that seem determined to test the limits of what viewers are willing to sit with. Cute, the debut feature from Marlene Emilie Lyngstad, firmly belongs in the latter category. A Danish drama centred on a man struggling with deeply disturbing attractions, the film establishes its intentions almost immediately, opening on the manufacture of pink frilly socks decorated with bunny rabbits. The imagery is innocent on the surface, yet loaded with unease. The film never really lets that discomfort subside.

A Quietly Unsettling Character Study

The story follows Richard, a seemingly ordinary middle-aged man who breaks off his relationship with Helle rather than move in with her and her young daughter. The reasons for his reluctance quickly become apparent. Richard’s attraction to children is never portrayed as ambiguous, and Cute spends much of its running time observing how he attempts to navigate these feelings while desperately seeking some form of normality.

The film’s greatest strength is its refusal to sensationalise Richard. Played with a quiet, unsettling restraint by Jan Gunnar Røise, he is not presented as a monster lurking in the shadows. Instead, he looks exactly like the sort of person one might pass in the street without a second glance. That normality is precisely what makes the character so disturbing. Richard is sinewy, withdrawn and almost painfully awkward. Throughout the film, he seems desperate to convince himself that he deserves happiness, even as his actions increasingly reveal how dangerous and unhealthy his impulses are.

Performative Innocence and Adult Dysfunction

Stella, played by Gina Jaqueline, is perhaps the film’s most fascinating and perplexing creation. She earns extra money producing videos in which she dresses and behaves like a child, surrounding herself with pink clothing, bunches, frills and Hello Kitty iconography. At first, she seems positioned as a commentary on arrested development and online performance culture. Yet as the film progresses, she increasingly becomes an enabler of Richard’s fantasies, or perhaps a victim of them. The screenplay never fully clarifies her motivations, leaving audiences to wrestle with uncomfortable questions about loneliness, dependency and self-delusion.

Many of the film’s most memorable scenes are also its most excruciating. A sequence in which Richard and Stella have sex while watching videos of her childhood is almost unbearable to watch. Rather than focus on intimacy between the couple, Richard is transfixed by the images on screen, staring without blinking while physically pushing Stella’s face aside.

Visually, Cute continually contrasts childhood imagery with adult dysfunction. Stella’s candy-coloured world of pink fabrics and infantile accessories sits against the depressing reality of ageing, illness and social isolation. Richard’s mother Lillian, meanwhile, ends up in a care home where residents wander aimlessly and require feeding, creating an uncomfortable parallel between childhood dependency and old age. The symbolism occasionally feels heavy-handed, but it is undeniably effective.

Ambiguity and Emotional Distance

What ultimately prevents Cute from becoming a fully satisfying drama is its ambiguity. Ambiguity is often a virtue, but here it sometimes feels less like a deliberate artistic choice and more like an unwillingness to commit. The film spends almost two hours placing viewers inside Richard’s perspective without offering a particularly clear insight into what it wants us to feel. Is it a portrait of a man battling urges he cannot control? A critique of society’s inability to deal with such individuals? A study of loneliness? A condemnation of exploitation? It hints at all of these themes but frustratingly never fully develops any of them.

Final Thoughts

That said, frustration may be exactly the response Cute is seeking. This is not a film designed for entertainment or easy emotional catharsis. It is a deeply uncomfortable character study that places audiences in proximity to behaviour most people would rather not contemplate. Whether that discomfort leads to insight is another matter entirely.

By the time Lyngstad cuts to the credits, Cute remains difficult to categorise and even harder to recommend. It is well acted, confidently directed and undeniably bold, yet it never quite transforms its provocative subject matter into a coherent statement. What remains is a strange, unsettling experience that lingers in the mind long after the film ends, less because of what it says than because of the questions it leaves unresolved.

Cute had its debut at San Sebastian Film Festvial – the film has not set release date. Watch out for our interview with the the film’s director next month.