‘Girls Will Be Girls’ movie review: A textured, eloquent coming-of-age story

As mother and daughter, Kani Kusruti and debutant Preeti Panigrahi dance a complex waltz in Shuchi Talati’s psychologically attuned boarding school drama ‘Girls Will Be Girls’

“I won’t allow anything more than a friendship,” decrees Anila (Kani Kusruti), a very mom thing to say. She is sizing up a tall, sweet boy, Srinivas (Kesav Binoy Kiron), who’s drawn her daughter’s affections at their elite, hillside boarding school. The girl, Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), stands at the door and listens. The camera mimics her watchful gaze. It is a simple domestic intervention, yet it thrums with suspense.

This is a charged, decisive moment in Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, which won two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Anila is a fussy, controlling parent, turning up annually from Haridwar to tide Mira through her exams. She is also lonely and emotionally desolate. Her choice of dress to meet Srinivas seems to give it away: a bright, oversized pink top with puffed shoulders, likely purchased at a younger age.

Mira, soon to turn 18, is at the threshold of that age. Sincere, petite and academically bright, she is appointed against tradition as her school’s first girl Head Prefect (how close the word hews to ‘perfect’). The prestige and significance of the appointment seem to weigh on Mira. In the opening scene, after taking her school pledge, she stalks down to inspect a line of delinquents, bossily issuing punishments and warnings. A friend ribs her by calling her ‘Mirabai’, mocking her matchless devotion to school rules.

In its initial stretches, Girls Will Be Girls resembles a conventional coming-of-age indie like Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, although Mira, at least at school, is the opposite of a teen rebel. Her romantic and sexual awakening is captured in furtive glances and gestures: tender hands brush against cold, hard instruments (Mira peers through both a microscope and a telescope. Our vision in teenage, as per Talati, is both expanded and thinned). There is a waltz of sexual jealousy between mother and daughter once the blithely unperturbed Srinivas becomes a habitue of their home, addressing Anila by her first name and, later, lying in bed beside her.

The film gains psychological force with Mira’s unravelling. Panigrahi’s bright, pleasant face reddens and rocks with a range of emotions. The screenplay by Talati is subtle and detailed. However, given the mostly static compositions and two primary settings, we are urged to hang onto words for clues. When Mira and Srinivas discuss Mendel’s first law of dominance, it feels like an encapsulation of paternalistic boarding school setups. Talati is not interested in hammering her point about gender norms and codes of excellence, but certain breadcrumbs — like the radio chatter in a scene mentioning the word ‘maryada’ (decorum) — are better disguised than others.

In Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, the other major prize-winner from India this year, Kani Kusruti plays a nurse eking out a hard, uncherished existence in Mumbai; by some resonance, the husband in Girls Will Be Girls is a curt, itinerant presence. Kani is one of those actors who can embody a lifetime; loneliness, in her playing, is a dimension and not a verdict of being. This depth of character lends texture and eloquence to Talati’s debut feature. Ringing up Srinivas for the first time, with a quietly seething Mira by her side, Anila covers the receiver in a kitchen towel to disguise her voice. It’s a playful, revealing detail, effortlessly evoking a girlhood lived and lost.

Girls Will Be Girls is streaming on Prime Video