Girls Will Be Girls
Shuchi Talati’s groundbreaking coming-of-age drama from India highlights some major new talent.
Image courtesy of Modern Films.
This is something special. Happily, it is not all that rare to come across a film which features actors seen for the first time who immediately reveal exceptional talent. Similarly, one finds first features that clearly mark the arrival of a director (and not infrequently a writer/director) whose work makes one eager to see what they will do next. Indeed, on occasion a single film arrives that combines both of these discoveries and this has recently been illustrated not just once but twice (I refer to Moin Hussain's Sky Peals starring Faraz Ayub and Naqqash Khalid’s In Camera starring Nabhaan Rizwan). Even so, for all the huge promise they contained both of those films were far from perfect. However, when it comes to the Indian venture Girls Will Be Girls (strictly speaking it's a co-production also involving France, the USA and Norway), we have a debut feature by writer/director Shuchi Talati which does more than provide two superb leading players, Preeti Panigrahi and Kesav Binoy Kiron, with their first screen roles. While the film may not be quite flawless, it comes very close to that. Talati and her two young leads together make this a film offering three exceptional debuts.
When you first hear the title of Talati’s film it sounds a good choice since, being a variation on the well-known phrase "Boys will be boys”, it immediately sticks in the mind and at the same time it is a pointer to the fact that this will be a tale told from a female perspective. However, once one sees the film the title seems slightly less apt: that’s because it also gives the impression that the piece will be relatively lightweight. What we get may not be exactly a heavy film but, as a portrait of adolescent first love, Girls Will Be Girls covers somewhat familiar territory with such insight and sensitivity as to make it one of the best films to appear this year.
The central figure here is a 16-year-old girl named Mira who attends a boarding school in the Himalayas and has just been made head prefect. It is the first time that a girl has been chosen (the story takes place in the 1990s) and her mother, Anila, a former student at the same school, is proud of her. Mira is a level-headed girl who takes her post seriously, but we meet her at a time when her eye falls on a new fellow pupil. This is Sri whose father is a diplomat who has recently moved from Hong Kong and this has led to his son entering the school just before his eighteenth birthday. The instant attraction that Mira feels for Sri is reciprocated. However, they are students in an establishment which is strict in keeping the girls away from the boys and, if the boys are allowed a certain leeway over their behaviour, the girls are expected to comply with the strictest traditional requirements and never to have close friendships with boys. Indeed, sexual matters are treated as a subject about which the female pupils need to be given firm warnings but no guidance of any other kind.
For Mira and Sri this means that their growing feelings for each other need to be hidden, but they are lucky in that Mira’s mother, Anila, has a house nearby and she is more modern in her outlook. She may not countenance an affair but she welcomes Sri as a visitor to her house, allows both youngsters to study there and encourages the friendship. She herself had married in her teens and is aware of the freedoms that she lacked when she was Mira's age. But it is from her daughter’s viewpoint that we are seeing things including the young couple turning to the internet for information about sex and eventually Mira losing her virginity to Sri who has acknowledged one earlier girlfriend but without any clear statement as to how far that relationship had gone. Mira shows some concern about that and now starts to feel uncomfortable over the closeness that she observes between her mother and Sri. That Anila, whose husband is often absent, is being somewhat flirtatious with the good-looking youth is indeed apparent, but Mira may be magnifying this thus adding to her mixed feelings about her mother whom she already regards as overprotective.
The casting of Girls Will Be Girls seems perfect all round including that of Kani Kusruti as the mother. The relationship between Anila and her daughter plays a significant role here leading to a beautifully judged final scene. Even so, it is the young couple’s relationship which is the key focus. It is observed with a sexual frankness virtually unknown in Indian cinema but this is honesty not exploitation and the screenplay is wonderfully sensitive to all the elements present in adolescent love affairs. Preeti Panigrahi as Mira and Kesav Binoy Kiron playing Sri have great chemistry together and his stunning good looks explain Mira’s instant attraction to him him even as the actor allows us to ponder how reliable he is. But it is Panigrahi who truly lights up the screen with her totally assured and sensitively detailed performance – I was even reminded of Audrey Hepburn’s triumph in her first leading role in Roman Holiday (1953).
It is possible to point to a few minor weaknesses. Some of the subsidiary characters could be fleshed out to advantage and that is particularly so in the case of Mira's father (Jitin Gulati). Furthermore, when the school pupils turn rebellious late on one feels a more detailed build-up would have been beneficial. But points such as these scarcely matter given the way in which the superb performances are handled by Talati, all this done in a manner which suggests in itself that she is a true auteur. Her direction with its appreciation of close-ups (shots of hands have rarely been so eloquent) results in an intimate work that is unhurried but never overextended and stamped with a personal touch throughout. Much of the dialogue is in English with only the Hindi passages subtitled, a fact that could add to its appeal for those less keen on subtitled films although those with hearing issues might have preferred subtitles for everything.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Preeti Panigrahi, Kani Kusruti, Kesav Binoy Kiron, Kajol Chugh, Devika Shahani, Akash Pramanik, Jitin Gulati, Nandini Verma, Aman Desai, Sumit Sharma, Pratap Singh, Pradeep Kapoor, Neeraj Varma.
Dir Shuchi Talati, Pro Richa Chadha, Claire Chassagne and Shuchi Talati, Screenplay Shuchi Talati, Ph Jih-E Peng, Pro Des Avyakta Kapur, Ed Amrita David, Music Pierre Oberkampf and Sneha Khanwalkar, Costumes Shaahid Amir.
Cinema Inutile/Pushing Buttons Studios/Crawling Angel Films/Dolce Vita Films/Blink Digital-Modern Films.
119 mins. India/France/USA/Norway. 2024. US Rel: 13 September 2024. UK Rel: 20 September 2024. Cert. 15.
