New Delhi:
A brilliant and sensitive student who loves her classmate, she is constantly monitored and scrutinized as she seeks to break free from familial and social constraints. girls will be girlsWriter-director Shuchi Talati’s confident, award-winning narrative feature now debuts on Amazon Prime Video.
The Indo-French co-production, which won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, is a masterfully crafted and insightful coming-of-age drama, buoyed by impeccable writing and some excellent performances from newcomer Preeti Panigrahi and veteran Kani. Kushruti.
Focusing on the girl’s relationship with her over-protective mother and her interaction with the disciplinary norms of her school, the film subtly and skillfully conveys the consequences of the restrictions that a conservative society imposes on women. Talati treats teenage desires and maternal instincts with utmost dexterity.
Revolving around simplistic questions of flaws and strengths, the script looks at actions and decisions and their consequences entirely from the perspective of the film’s three lead characters and then views them through a distorted, conformist social lens into a larger, increasingly Presented on painted canvas.
girls will be girlsIt is executive produced by Richa Chadha of Pushing Buttons Films, Claire Chassagne of Dolce Vita Films, Sanjay Gulati of Crawling Angel Films and produced by the director himself, Ali Fazal. It is made by an all-women crew including cinematographer Jih-Ee Peng, production designer Avyakt Kapoor and editor Amrita David.
The film’s female gaze focuses on how small, hurtful battles are fought in a world of entrenched conservatism at home and beyond. Women demand control over the choices they make regarding their lives, hearts, and bodies.
This is how the heroine, Meera Prakash (Preeti Panigrahi), finds her way out of the clutches of the rules. girls will be girls Mainly about. Talati presents the delicate drama of first love in the ever-changing whirlpool of a girl’s journey from sexual awakening to self-discovery, a process that clearly begins at the physical level and then extends well beyond that.
At school, Meera has almost everything. She is a class topper and the first girl to become head prefect of her co-educational boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas. She may have broken the glass ceiling, but she can’t escape the prying eyes of arrogant elders and disgruntled, even misguided, classmates.
The school, for its part, has imposed oppressively strict rules. The onus is on Mira to enforce full compliance. Not surprisingly, he is not popular among the other pupils, but his teachers love him very much because of his promise as a student.
Meera’s mother Anila (Kani Kushruti) imposes on her daughter the same code of conduct that she would face growing up and courting the man she married, who happens to be the girl’s father. She tells Meera, I don’t want you to feel that you need to hide anything from me. But she gives her teenage daughter no shortage of reasons to do so.
Anila tries as much as possible to keep Meera out of her sight, especially when school exams are around the corner. A strained relationship begins between a new student, Srinivas (debutant Kesav Binoy Kiran), a diplomat’s son recently transferred from Hong Kong, and Meera.
A shy kiss on the cheek is a major line crossed for the girl and is the beginning of secret preparation for her first kiss. But the personal space that Meera craves is hardly available to her. Anila immediately steps in and starts manipulating the situation. Its purpose is to keep a close eye on early friendships.
Under circumstances that leave her little room for maneuver, Meera navigates her sexual desires and her stolen moments with Srinivas as best she can, one tentative step at a time, and keeps their relationship safe from the inevitable interference of a mother. Wants to be kept away from someone who predictably believes she has her daughter’s best interests at heart.
The school also prohibits dating. It makes every effort to keep girls away from boys. A teacher scolds a student for wearing a skirt of the wrong length and holds up Mira, whose hemline reaches the knees, as an example for everyone to emulate.
An important part of the minimalist story, which focuses on the mother-daughter relationship and the two characters’ developing bond with Srinivas, is a lonely hostel inmate looking for friends and home-cooked food, with Anila providing clear guidelines for it. Follows the steps of. Nice boy” she calls home.
In her first meeting with Srinivas, she made it clear that “I will not accept anything more than friendship”. Neither Meera nor Srinivas are clearly in any mood to heed that order, although Anila never stops telling them that she knows what they are doing.
Raging hormones and silent rebellion find their way into this powerfully intimate, intensely observant and unfailingly perceptive portrait of one girl’s determination not to be stuck with someone against her will.
Human eyes and mechanical viewing devices (the telescopes of the school astronomy club, the microscopes in the biology laboratory, phone cameras put to questionable use by recalcitrant schoolboys) play important roles in the film.
Meera is always under the surveillance of her mother, teachers and classmates. “Meera, I have eyes,” her hostel roommate Priya (Kajol Chugh) tells her, suggesting that her affair with Srinivas is public knowledge.
Later, when Srinivas stays at their house one night and Meera plans another secret meeting, her mother says: “You think I can’t see what’s going on?” This is a city where girls are always under scrutiny and where it is impossible to remain anonymous.
Anila constantly hovers over Meera. She says, my daughter is my priority. In one sequence, Meera sits in front of her dressing table mirror after feeling the first wave of love. Music plays from the radio. She dances to the sweet rhythm of the song. The camera shows her mother as she enters the room, joins the dance and seizes control of Meera’s space. Anila suddenly stops dancing and stops the music.
No words are spoken but much is communicated. girls will be girls There are moments like this from beginning to end. Take your eyes off the screen and you’ll miss a world. It’s the kind of film that’s both mesmerizingly detailed and resonantly universal.
