I think I'm in the minority here that I'm somewhat dissatisfied with Testaments. I think it pulls its punches. But bro... im supposed to believe these are a bunch of pubescent girls? Girls typically get their periods around age 11-14. Like, no way. None of these women could pass any younger than 16 at a stretch, and that's only because by 16 girls have usually gone through the majority of changes, which the text is explicitly telling us they haven't. You really can't get around this problem when so much of the plot explicitly revolves around their physical development.
It's not just a matter of suspension of disbelief. The story is *telling* me that I'm watching a story of child exploitation, but I'm *seeing* 26-year-olds. Don't get me wrong, it's also terrible when adults are exploited, but it doesn't trigger the same instantaneous revulsion. We are being told this is child marriage, but our brains are processing people old enough to rent a car. People who can vote,people of an age we understand to be responsible adults. The dissonance between what we're seeing and what we're being told undercuts the message. It makes it seem like child exploitation isn't as bad as it is.
I mean, think of that scene where Agnes is being interrogated by a bunch of commanders like a potential brood mare. Horrible, right? Now imagine that scene with an actual 12-year-old actress. Imagine a bunch of tiny children cheering for that guardian to get his hand cut off. It would hit so much harder, and it would really make the point how vulnerable these girls are and how awful this society is.
I get that there are limits and difficulties to working with children, legally. And I haven't read the book, maybe there are scenes that it wouldn't be ethical to shoot with child actresses, idk. I'm sure they have their reasons. But I just feel like you're doing a disservice to the subject matter to make these girls look so much more mature than they would actually be. It comes across as softening the impact, when the HT universe has always been about unflinchingly exposing patriarchal evil.