I can think of several words, but the recent French-produced Netflix feature is a riveting visual antonym, especially considering the original French title of the film: Mignonnes.
Mignonne can be translated as an adjective meaning “small and delicately pretty” or as a noun meaning “sweetheart” depending on the context. It can also be translated as “cute”. An online translation app might translate L’orchidée est mignonne as “The orchid is cute,” but it could be missing a more subtile meaning.
Further, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a French filmmaker would be familiar with French literature, and one of the poems that most French students study is Ode à Cassandre by Pierre de Ronsard. It’s sensual poem that glorifies the game of seduction. Note how it begins.
Mignonne, allons voir si la rose
Qui ce matin avoit déclose
Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,
A point perdu cette vesprée
Les plis de sa robe pourprée,
Et son teint au vôtre pareil.
Las! voyez comme en peu d’espace,
Mignonne, elle a dessus la place
Las ! las ses beautés laissé choir
Ô vraiment marâtre Nature,
Puis qu’une telle fleur ne dure
Que du matin jusques au soir
Donc, si vous me croyez, mignonne,
Tandis que votre âge fleuronne
En sa plus verte nouveauté,
Cueillez, cueillez vôtre jeunesse:
Comme à cette fleur la vieillesse
Fera ternir votre beauté.
Here’s an English translation.
Sweetheart, let’s see if the rose
That this morning had open
Her crimson dress to the Sun,
This evening hasn’t lost
The folds of her crimson dress,
And her complexion similar to yours.
Ah! See how in such short space
My sweetheart, she has on this very spot
All her beauties lost!
O, so un-motherly Nature,
Since such a beautiful flower
Only last from dawn to dusk!
So if you believe me, my sweetheart,
While time still flowers for you,
In its freshest novelty,
Do take advantage of your youthful bloom:
As it did to this flower, the doom
Of age will blight your beauty.
So the French title of what some are calling soft kiddie porn is an allusion to a well-known poem that celebrates seduction a young girl.
Cueillez, cueillez vôtre jeunesse
Do take advantage of your youthful bloom (lit., “Pick, pick your youth”)
Perhaps this tells us something about the filmmaker’s real intentions.
I fail to understand how anyone can defend such an abuse of young girls.
Ms. Alcindor, you say that as if it were a bad thing.
Neither Nikolai Yazhov nor Winston Smith were available for comment.
FIFY.
Heh.