Girls Will Be Girls
In ‘Girls Will Be Girls‘, the feature debut of writer director Shuchi Talati, girlhood as a cross generational experience is poignantly captured. Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) is at the top of her studies.. Being the first female promoted to head prefect at her boarding school, she wears the prefect badge on her lapel with pride, strolling around the academy with content and invincible self belief. She upholds the manuals of the school uniform, leads a morning assembly daily chanting the vows of the school, and acts as an intermediary between the head and students of the institute while still maintaining a small grin and chin up high. She is considered a model student who has earned the respect of the entire school. This esteem would soon come to be an anchor around her neck.
This is part of her passing duties which involves being the model student and portraying the ideals of the school, which comes with practicing discipline, academic excellence, and propriety. However, upon meeting a new binding an international kid, Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), waves upon waves of emotions take her over, a feeling of first love mixed with social pressures and an emotionally distraught relationship with her mother. The chemistry between Mira and Sri is undeniable and for that reason they are overpoweringly drawn together but covertly. This kind of association is frowned upon in school policies although the school enforces these policies most of the time in an unsophisticated manner.
The subject head in this chapter has been well described as “Ms Bansal (Devika Shahani)”, the principal of the primary school and parents’ terror, the embodiment of anticulture compliance.
The ladies are warned, “Beware of boys. Don’t engage them too much.” There are also rules on how short their skirts should be, and they are even blamed for young males taking upskirt pictures of them while climbing the stairs. The constant reminder of ‘boys will be boys’ attitude is rampant, and this the film here seeks to subvert, as the title suggests.
Sri is described as a class friend at home because Mira’s mother, Anila (Kani Kusruti), does not let her have a boyfriend. She says that if Mira’s performance drops, her husband will say it is her fault. But even as she is being mostly supportive of Mira’s education, there is a subtle undertone of scorn. Anila becomes a vicious mother figure, first a mild irritation, but as Mira grows, she becomes more unrestrained. Mira already has issues with her mother and bears less regard for her when Anila finally steps in to this difficult stage of the adolescent Mira.
“Girls Will Be Girls” maintains a warm, gentle, yet homey feel by keeping a 4:3 aspect ratio. With Talati directing, the audience is always left within the perspective of Mira, the protagonist. It also shows significant gestures that are present in mundane speech, such as interlocked fingers, extended fingers, or fluttering eyelashes. It’s romantic and intimate, and paints a picture of how even the smallest of gestures can be electrifying. Purvam Panigrahi, who received the Sundance Dramatic Special Jury award for her role, is absolutely stunning in her role. She portrays this beautiful young woman who is always surrounded by chaos but is always self assured and headstrong enough to stand her ground. The bond shared by Panigrahi and Kiron shines with sweetness as their giddiness for one another slowly morphs into something much deeper and much more selfish.
While the narrative focuses around that of Mira’s development, it is very much also a coming of age movie focusing on discovery and the unspoken trauma that most women contain deep inside themselves.
“Girls Will Be Girls” is without a doubt as much of a film about Anila as it is about Mira, the main protagonist. Most of the aspects, which we qualify Anila, we learn about through the prism of relations with Mira. At the same time this love is tinged with a heavy mix of protectiveness and rivalry as a mother watches her daughter develop a self assuredness that she lacked in her youth. Addressing a very touchy issue during one of the dinner scenes, it is suggested in the film that she married Mira’s father in order to have sex only instead of deciding to approve of the union, which she is quite unhappy with after all these years.
Several decisions proposed throughout the film by Anila are particularly aggressive and sit right on the edge of disbelief. Yet, because of Kusruti’s engaged, understanding performance, and because of Talati’s sensitively written material, “Girls Will Be Girls” succeeds. The screenplay contains a lot of gentle attachments that evoke the same first feelings that are newly discovered by Mira timelessly and prototypically. The film is advertised as a slow burn and the trailers portray it fairly accurately because the pacing is spot on. The actors have sufficient time to breathe, allowing them to play with the unsaid words which in turn makes the film as edge of the sea as it is.
“Girls Will Be Girls” revels in the portrayal of females aged around puberty in a manner which is both complex and ridiculously powerful.
One simply becomes curious regarding the provocative title: what does it mean for girls to be girls? It means that there are growing pains that are imposed oppression but still there is strength and self direction to be found in spite of it. It means pairing with your mom and starting to think of her as a girl who had to mature rather than the female figure you’ve known all your life. Still many of Talati’s films are not too sentimental, nor do they clean their subject matter. They are, however, ineluctably about what is.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.