‘Girls Will Be Girls’ Review: The Ephemeral Promise of Millennial Love

Girls Will Be Girls, Shuchi Talati’s sharply observed debut feature, begins both literally and figuratively on a mountaintop. Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) is the first girl to become head prefect at her elite, co-educational boarding school in an unnamed town in the Himalayan foothills of Northern India. Mira embodies the focus and diligence of a straightlaced academic overachiever. In carrying out her duties, she gently reprimands her girlfriends when their uniforms deviate from the code and, on the teacher’s insistence, chides them for spending too much time around boys (whose own antics receive barely any scrutiny). When the charismatic Srinivas ‘Sri’ (Kesav Binoy Kiron), a diplomat’s son, joins the school Mira’s academic pursuits and scrupulousness collide against the joyous labour of first love.

Talati is deft in building three worlds that intersect with each other: Mira’s interiority, her burgeoning sexual curiosity and exploration of her body; the school – an institution steeped in conformity and patriarchal control; and the sun dappled cosy home she occasionally cohabits with her mother Anila (Kani Kusruti) and mostly absent father. As Talati has noted, for most girls growing up in South Asia, schools are the first public spaces where they are pressured into conforming to gender norms and where their clothing and movements are policed. When Mira reports an upskirting incident to her teacher, the blame is shifted onto the girls for not wearing appropriately lengthy uniforms. While policing and shaming of women’s sexuality happens often within the sphere of the household too, Talati sets up a contrast in Mira’s domestic space where she has relatively more freedom and support even under the watchful gaze of her mother.

Alongside the blossoming romance, it is the relationship between Mira and Anila that occupies the film’s emotional fulcrum. Mira’s relationship is not concealed from her mother; Anila is aware and welcomes Sri into their household to study so she can keep an eye on the couple. Yet, Sri’s presence and attention begins to stir affection in Anila too, raising the stakes and creating palpable tension and discomfort. Talati treads a subtle line and makes it difficult for the viewer  to label Anila as a transgressor and Mira a victim – perhaps because Anila envies her daughter’s youth and views her budding romance against her own unfulfilled desires. It is evident that Anila’s life has been minimised in a way where her labour, love and longing is all wrapped into being a mother and homemaker, while by contrast Mira’s maturing sensibilities hold the promise that more is possible. 

This cinematic bildungsroman is smartly set against the structural and cultural transformation of late 90s post-liberalisation India, which brought with it Western fashion imports that Mira embraces. It was also a time before technology had permeated every aspect of how teenagers and young adults corresponded and expressed themselves. Seeing the two lovers use land lines to communicate will be nostalgic for any child growing up in the 80s and 90s. 

It is true that empathetic writing is integral to the telling of a nuanced plotline, but it is Kusruti’s performance that really enables her character to walk the maternal tightrope between nurturing and triggering her daughter. Even if there was scope for a bit more back story on Anila to understand more about the absences in her life, Talati lets us in on small details such as the character being an alum of the same school and while Mira and Anila communicate mostly in English, occasionally Anila slips into Malayalam, spoken in the Southern state of Kerala. These character footnotes left me wanting a bit more about where she comes from, her sense of belonging and identity within the world she now inhabits. However, I can also see how filling in these blanks may have made the film as a whole slightly less arresting. As Talati has stated: “The women in this film are not essentialised by their identities as Indian women, nor are they stand-ins for entire communities whose stories enlighten us about a social issue.”

The pace of the film is languid, which is perhaps necessary as the narrative unfurls with tempered curiosity. The pace mirrors how 16-year-old Mira is experiencing the first flush of erotic desire particularly in a cultural context where sex education is shunned as part of school curriculums. She is always observing and frequently silent, especially in the scenes with Anila. Yet the long stretches of silence are neither the absence nor suppression of thought. Her silence is instead reflective of a mind in the process of discovery, both of the self and the boundaries she wishes to transcend. The quietude also works in magnifying conflict and mirroring behaviour: in one scene Mira and Anila stand in front of a mirror brushing their teeth, and no words are required for us to understand what either of them is feeling. 

Panigrahi gives a measured performance conveying the vulnerability of a teenager discovering her desires and body but who is also astute and perceptive. The strength of the writing and acting are especially evident in scenes where Mira practices kissing on her own wrist while in the shower, masturbates with a teddy bear and lip-syncs to a seductive song in the mirror revelling in her body. The 4:3 aspect ratio allows the viewer to follow Mira’s gaze and also situates her in a world where she is negotiating the strictures of girlhood. In some scenes Talati and Taiwanese cinematographer Jih-E Peng place Mira’s face in the corner of the frame, use mirrors, and room layouts that have sight lines to heighten what is within her field of vision and what isn’t. 

But as Mira and Sri rendezvous in secret more often, the wide shots give way to extended close ups of faces and hands; I appreciated how full every moment of intimacy feels, how much work each scene does, how sure-footedly Talati evokes invigoration but rarely sentimentality. The intimate scenes were shot with an all female crew as Talati was intentional about getting as many women technicians as possible on the project, which is no small feat in India.  

Talati has said that she thinks of her cinema as political in its close examination of gender relationships and how power structures that exist in society express themselves in these interpersonal dynamics. This echoes Sally Rooney’s comment in a 2018 interview in relation to her novel Normal People, another coming of age story, that she is most interested in writing about paradigms of power in sexual relationships. In parallel mediums Talati and Rooney are in conversation with each other. However, Talati’s work is especially significant when we consider the socio-political context in which this story is told – a society all too accustomed to shaming female sexuality and where elemental barriers of caste, class and religion make the sweetness of falling in love across those boundaries a deeply political and subversive act.

The parting shot of Girls Will Be Girls has a gentle resolve, painting a portrait of two women across generations who are both coming of age. Talati thrusts them with their singular complexities but also a modicum of agency permissible within the confines of their circumstances.

Girls Will Be Girls is released in the U.K. on 20 September 2024. Header photo courtesy Luxbox Films.