Girls Will Be Girls Review: A Mesmerising Look At the Trials & Joys of Girlhood
'Girls Will Be Girls', starring Preeti Panigrahi and Kani Kusruti, is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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Writer-director Shuchi Talati’s feature debut Girls Will Be Girls is a deeply resonating, relatable, and ‘special’ film. When we speak of a human connection, more often than not, we’re speaking of ‘understanding’, of someone that ‘gets’ you. And it is this connection that Girls Will Be Girls focuses on while painting a picture of womanhood (and ‘girlhood’) across generations.
Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) is a model student and the first female student to be appointed head prefect at her boarding school – it becomes clear early on that this responsibility comes with added scrutiny and heightened stakes. It’s hinted at, often, that she must ‘prove’ her place in the hierarchy not only as a student but as a female student. For her, failure isn’t an option.
Set in a world of academics, the film takes a look at what it means to be a ‘model’ student – her grades (and socks) never fall and her skirt is the ‘right’ length. But when she meets a new student Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), this perfect world filled with rules seems to crumble, especially in a world where female desire is seen as a rebellion. Mira’s life is now essentially split into two schools of thought.
Mira’s mother Anila (a magnificent Kani Kusruti) doesn’t expect the same compliance to tradition from her that her teachers or the principal Bansal (Devika Sharma) do. She isn’t expected to watch the length of her skirt at home but she must negotiate with the fact that her school does look at ‘freedom’ unequally amongst her peers. When Mira sees boys clicking underskirt pictures of young girls, her reflex is to report it to the authorities and their reflex, in return, is to blame the girls. ‘This is why you should be careful of the length of your skirt,” the teacher says and the ‘boys will be boys’ is implied.
But the film doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to discussing these double standards – the makers aren’t content to make a point and move on. “Reporting them will only make it more difficult for the girls,” the teacher tells Mira, highlighting how the threat of punishment alone isn’t enough to address behaviour that is a direct result of patriarchal conditioning. A systemic issue can only be fixed with systemic change. The phrase ‘boys will be boys’ that the film’s title aims to subvert is as dangerous as it is ‘simple’ to say.
When we hold someone else accountable for another’s misdeed, we create a culture of impunity and apathy. It is this culture, present throughout a young girl’s life, which Girls Will Be Girls lays bare without hesitation or sanitation.
At home, Mira and Anila grapple with the evolving nature of their mother-daughter relationship while navigating their personal journeys. In her coming-of-age journey, one that her mother went through as well, Mira is exploring her sexual agency and questioning the rules she is constantly meant to follow because of her gender identity. But Anila is a constant presence in her life, one that soon becomes overbearing.
Girls Will Be Girls doesn’t make Anila the object of sympathy as many Indian films tend to do; instead Anila walks the thin line between protagonist and antagonist – in essence, one of the most well-rounded characters of the film. Anila’s girlhood or coming-of-age journey was starkly different from her daughter’s – ‘They didn’t even consider girls for prefects in my time’ she notes – and that leads to some resentment. Mira has inherited Anila’s spirit and through the relentless focus on Mira and her interactions, the film creates empathy for Anila.
If simply existing and exploring her agency is this difficult for Mira today, how did a spirit like hers survive in Anila at a time that was much harder?
Most of the interactions between the mother-daughter duo are charged with the things they won’t or can’t say. “I trust you,” Anila says but they are both acutely aware of the sentiment’s fragility. As a teenager, Mira will rebel and as a mother, Anila will find herself reaching into the same patriarchal conditioning to reprimand her. It is a tale as old as time and yet, Girls Will Be Girls manages to make it seem so novel.
Panigrahi deserves all the laurels she has and shall receive for her performance; she is simply mesmerizing and electric on screen. She captures Mira’s vulnerability and spunk brilliantly. In mere glances and smiles and frowns, Panigrahi and Kusruti express multitudes.
And if Anila is envious of Mira, the reverse is also true. Sri acts as an anchor between Anila and Mira in a way that you might find yourself questioning more often than not. He asks Anila questions and often seems to rely on her for support and yet his affection for Mira is never under question. Without a family that’s constantly present, Sri finds himself drawn both to Anila’s maternal presence and the stories of her youth. Mira, who dismisses her mother in more than one occasion in the throes of teenage angst, doesn’t get to enjoy that ‘connection’.
This specific aspect of the interactions between the three is reminiscent of the poem ‘Speak to Me of My Mother, Who Was She’ by Jasmine Mans. It reads, “Tell me about that girl my mother was, before she traded in all her girl to be my mother.” The poem speaks of a longing we rarely see expressed in cinema – the shared grief of losing one’s girlhood to a society that doesn’t nurture it. Anila and Mira struggle with this morose reality constantly, all while keeping the spark within them alive.
Talati’s sensitive direction and Jih-E-Peng’s camerawork are exquisite – there is no ‘rush’ throughout the film, the gaze is tender. And that only makes a particularly tense sequence involving Mira even more harrowing to watch – it’s like the technical team decides to loosen the reins just a bit, but enough to disorient in the best way possible. Girls Will Be Girls is the perfect example of a film that understands how to pace the slower moments to create a cohesive and engaging narrative.
The close-ups and the wide shots are all planned seamlessly, not a single frame seems out of place – the lingering touches and the charged glances vs the scenes where the viewer needs to take a step back are all executed well.
So then we’re left with the question of the hour… what does ‘girls will be girls’ mean? What does it mean to be a girl, a woman, in today’s world? It means that there are parts of one’s identity that will remain under scrutiny; that the world is unfair and normal human behaviour that is encouraged for most might not be for them. That the 'burden' of womanhood is generational and inescapable but so are the joys..
With every passing day, girls will be girls because they will sing and they will fight and they will rejoice. They will reclaim the spaces that aim to leave them out and, if we all try, they’ll always have someone to turn to.
Girls Will Be Girls, is produced by Richa Chadha, Claire Chassagne, and Shuchi Talati, and is streaming on Prime Video.
Rating: 4.5/5