"Philip French of the Observer calls Rottländer's performance as Alice "unforgettable". He goes on to say that the movie would not be able to be made today "partly because of the invention of the mobile phone, partly because of our obsessive fear of anything that might be interpreted as paedophilia.""

I wonder if he's seen Hick. While it contains no upper body exposure of any sort unlike Alice, the relationship between the minor and the adult in the film was not platonic. There, the movie is peppered with scenes preoccupied with the sordid aspects of Chloe Moretz's character, depicting a girl who's used primarily as a means for men to elicit sexual favours from. A total abomination of a movie, if I may say so, which should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Still I kinda see what he's getting at though; in an age where even something like a toddler's belly posted online could be construed as harmful therefore open to backlash, people are going to turn away from transgressive subject matter. But applied in public settings like the beach there's nothing remotely faux pax to be spoken of. I actually saw an adolescent girl clad in what my brainwashed self perceived to be a skimpy pair of shorts once at a local restaurant, but this fact never seemed to register in the minds of folks nearby. Once something that's within lines of acceptability elsewhere is transcribed onto celluloid then magically all evils are released into the world all of a sudden. Would another road movie like Kikujiro be overstepping the boundaries of good taste if the boy was more revealing? Alice in the Cities also happens to be rated a U and still widely distributed to this day. Paedos rejoice!