In the southern U.S., specifically in Oklahoma and Texas where I grew up, sex ed was nonexistent. In its place was a scared-straight advocacy for abstinence, whose weapons were graphic PowerPoint slides of blackened genitals obliterated by STIs. Sitting us down in the cafeteria and subjecting us to carnival-mirror horrorshow versions of body parts we already feared and distrusted was deemed more humane—more suitable for our innocent minds—than actually telling us about sex. When girls in our class inevitably got pregnant, they were quietly hurried off to another school, out of sight. The ideological hypocrisy of patriarchy, established and reinforced over generations, tangibly changed dozens of lives in my graduating class alone. Girls Will Be Girls, writer/director Shuchi Talati’s engrossing feature debut, zeroes in on a specific example of this still-universal repression. In its lovingly observed, casually bold and uneasily tense coming-of-age drama exists familiar dynamics we’d rather not recognize.
The rich colors, stunning landscape and intimate, close-and-cramped frames filled by Talati and cinematographer Jih-E Peng evoke the intensity of a high school crush long before we understand the complex chemistry between goodie-goodie prefect Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) and worldly new kid Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron). But we pick up on that soon enough. The two get together at a meeting of their strict boarding school’s after-hours astronomy club. It’s one of those excuses you secretly, meticulously orchestrate in order to be alone with the person you’re interested in…and one of those excuses completely obvious to everyone around you.
The accurately cute and convoluted encounters in their romance—sparked in the cold, in the dark, huddled together under a blanket and shot tight enough to give you butterflies—doesn’t remain clandestine for long. First of all, they’re young. Mira is 16 and Sri is 17. They’re not rocket scientists. Second, they’re in an environment (a ‘90s Indian prep school tucked away in the Himalayas) particularly adept at sussing out rule-breaking, especially if it’s flouting the conservative, patriarchal powers that be. Mira’s the first girl at school to be named prefect, and the dickhead boys camping out under the stairway so they can snap upskirt pictures don’t let her forget it.
So when Mira’s mom Anila (Kani Kusruti) figures out what’s going on between them, we’re not surprised. It’s what comes next that’s surprising. The unfolding psychologies of the kids and Anila push both the coming-of-age format and the “cool mom” trope to their edges, resulting in outrageous tension that sometimes threatens to overwhelm an otherwise hyper-grounded story.
Talati excels at constructing compelling, physical visualizations reminding us of all the relatable minutiae of being 16, all a little more explicit than we might expect. Masturbation? Checking out your junk in the mirror? These are normal pubescent things, which Girls Will Be Girls treats as exactly that. Talati’s confidence in her scenes—like Mira practicing kissing on her own wrist in the bath, or trying to lip-sync to a song all sexy-like in the mirror—and her trust in her leads are felt in every extended close-up.
Panigrahi is fantastic, especially when it comes to two of the stares needed most by teens: Withering glares and lustful ogling. Jealousies and lies infect her like a pox, immediately visible in her face. Her work allows Mira to believably weather injustice, sear powerlessly and pursue pleasure—all with a defiant energy. Kiron, asked to play easy confidence capable of putting a parent at (perhaps too much) ease, is solid as well. Life is simple for him, and the leads’ conflicting responses to their shared scenes helps hammer home the inescapably gendered ways they move through the world.
Kusruti, though, has the hardest job in Girls Will Be Girls, and it’s with her character that the film can lose itself in its own heightened situations. Anila, a victim of the same culture as her daughter, is repressed in a familiarly contradictory way—at least, if you’ve had any experience in an environment where feelings are quashed so thoroughly that they only come out after bubbling over past the point of expectation or propriety. Anila, then, is caught in a conundrum: She wants to discipline her straight-arrow daughter for straying from the path, but sees an opportunity open up to finally hit the release valve on her own pent-up youthfulness.
This tension and release (which then causes more tension) revs up the tone of Girls Will Be Girls, flooring it from romance to a little off to erotic thriller. It’s an attempt at heightening some of the taboo competitiveness, the resentment, that can stir between parent and child as one’s blooming sexuality can cause the other to feel like theirs is waning. But, especially when paired with the refreshing normalcy of Mira and Sri’s relationship, this idea—like Mira’s mom—comes on far too strong. Inelegant foreshadowing arrives as downright artificial scandalousness; some later scenes can almost feel like set-ups for porn plots. This horny falseness does, to an extent, mirror the adolescent excuses of the film’s beginning, but it’s also such an extreme element that it overpowers the rest of the movie. Why should we bother worrying about Mira’s reputation among the student body when her mom might be pursuing her boyfriend?
Don’t get me wrong, though: Talati can make us squirm. She demonstrates it in small moments—like when Mira gets creeped on by the sales associate while trying on clothes—and larger ones—like when the boys at school decide they’ve had enough, and bullying breaks into something more organized and dangerous. Her placement of Mira’s face in the corner of the frame, her use of mirrors, her savvy and clear set-up of room layouts: Talati does what the best directors do, which is establish the stakes and situations with style and substance working in tandem. Sometimes her script devotes too much ink to reinforcing ideas already well-established by her images, and sometimes her dialogue can veer towards flowery YA conversations. But Talati’s made a gripping and beautiful debut, filled with reasons to watch her next movie.
Under the intense patriarchy of Indian society, where domestic and sexual violence towards women runs rampant, the complex relationships running through Girls Will Be Girls have had generations to ferment. The same forces that prevent the boys of Mira’s school from being suspended, that allow them to turn on her without consequence, are the forces pushing expressions of sexual desire into the shadows. When natural needs are warped into secret rebellions, it’s only normal that normalcy itself is distorted. Despite some narrative gambles not quite paying off, Girls Will Be Girls’ empathetic, sumptuous drama demonstrates what it looks like when the rubber-band enforcement and effects of a patriarchal society stretches, then snaps.
Director: Shuchi Talati
Writer: Shuchi Talati
Starring: Preeti Panigrahi, Kani Kusruti, Kesav Binoy Kiron
Release Date: January 20, 2024 (Sundance)
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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