Girls Will Be Girls Review: Girlhood Examined

Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls masterfully examines the beauty and pain in girlhood through the lens of a fraught mother-daughter relationship.

Girls Will Be Girls centers around 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), an exemplary student at her straitlaced boarding school, located in the Himalayas. Her ambition and drive have earned her the position of head prefect, the most senior student in charge of enforcing the school’s strict rules. Even more impressive, Mira is the first female to ever be named head prefect. While Mira boards at the school during the week, on the weekend she stays with her mother Anila (Kani Kusruti, of All We Imagine As Light). Anila is a former pupil of the esteemed boarding school and she has a home just off campus she lives in during the most intensive weeks leading up to Mira’s major exams. 

After gaining her head prefect title, Mira attracts the attention of Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), a new transfer student who completely opens Mira’s eyes to a world she’s never had the time, or interest, to explore before. For the first time, Mira begins to ignore the rules in favor of spending time with Sri. In a clandestine effort to spend more time with Sri, Mira tells her mother they are studying for upcoming exams together and Sri begins to come to the off-campus house as much as Anila allows. 

Mira must figure out how to manage the exploration of her newly awakened sexuality while dealing with the pressure of holding such an important role in her school, maintaining her grades and balancing the mounting pressure from her mother.

Talati’s first feature film is a masterclass in observant storytelling. The film feels like it listens to and sees Mira in all her complexities and yet refuses to cast judgments on her for trying to find who she is outside of her role as a perfect student. It does the same for the character of Anila, a mother who has been relegated to the role of a caregiver and seemingly stripped of all other identities. Girls Will Be Girls is a film about truly seeing women at two very different stages of life, highlighting how our search for identity is neverending and always deserving of grace. 

This film is shot in a way that is so personal, at times you feel like watching it is an intrusion into Mira’s life and budding relationship. Talati frames each shot with tenderness and love for the girl at the center of her story. It’s palpable how much the character of Mira means to Talati. 

Shots throughout the film often frame the hands of the characters in a delicate way, almost to show them as a peak into the mind of the characters more than even their faces or eyes. These shots are able to recreate and almost authenticate the emotions of each scene, whether it be the giddiness Mira feels when Sri grazes his hands over hers or the hesitation Mira has to take Sri’s outreached hands when forgiving him after a fight. This technique is tactical and, more importantly, artful, in the way it brings us into the story without having to tell us matter-of-factly how Mira feels. 

As much as the story is about Mira, it’s in equal parts about Anila. The film really hones in on the idea that to be loved is to be seen. Sri sees Mira in a way no one else has before. He is the first person to acknowledge her sexuality and encourage her to explore it. When Sri begins to spend time at the house with Mira and Anila, he employs an obligatory charm to impress Anila as Mira’s mother but then takes it a step further. He remembers things about Anila, he asks her questions and seemingly genuinely cares to hear her answers. 

While Sri’s presence awakens something new in Mira, it also awakens a part of Anila that had been left dormant for so many years. Mira and Anila both see these differences and greatly struggle to cope with how this changes their perceptions of one another. The throughline in Mira and Anila’s relationship is an inability to cope with one another’s womanhood. Girls Will Be Girls brilliantly makes this the central focus and, in many ways, the central conflict of the film. 

Anila is someone who was thrust into womanhood with particular expectations of who she would be and an understanding that nothing would be able to come of the brilliance she exhibited as a child. She sees that Mira has a real and true chance at complete autonomy if she continues down the path at school she is set on. There’s an element of envy Anila has when it comes to her daughter and the opportunities she has in front of her. Coupled with her youth, Anila sees her daughter as what her life could have been if she was given a chance and therefore doesn’t want her to waste her potential which doesn’t allow her to accept her daughter’s desire to explore her sexuality. 

On the other hand, Mira has been primed to be the head prefect. Her whole life has revolved around test grades and following the rules. Her relationship with Sir is her chance to have one singular thing to herself. No one else has to approve, it’s not done to further her academic status. It’s hers and hers alone. This is why her mother’s involvement in their relationship is such a hit to Mira’s sense of freedom and self she derives from exploring this relationship. The anger and resentment Mira has towards her mom takes away all the dimensionality of her mother’s identity. 

The relationship between Mira and Anila is beautifully messy. They are two sides of the same coin, both too stubborn to concede to one another. The brilliance in Talati’s first film is the authenticity of this mother-daughter pair. It’s a reminder that your sense of self will never be completely definitive. It’s ever-changing and always surprising in the direction it will take you. Being a mother or the head prefect does not have to be the only thing to define you as everyone has their own labyrinth of complexities.  

Preeti Panigrahi embodies Mira with a sense of light and calculated curiosity that gives the center of the story a definitive heartbeat. She makes the audience effortlessly fall in love with Mira. Kani Kusruti brings a levity to the film, elegantly depicting Anila who wants the best for her daughter because no one ever fought to get the best for her. The chemistry Panigrahi and Kusruti have built as mother and daughter is dynamic and ever-changing. At times it feels so real it will make you think of all the ways your mother parents you and the times where you parent your mother. 

Girls Will Be Girls highlights that mothers are allowed to be whole, full-bodied women and daughters are allowed to come of age and in touch with their sexuality. The truth in these ideals, however, does not negate the discomfort in their manifestations. Young girls just want their moms to be their moms. Mothers want their daughters to be protected from all the troubles, and in truth, dangers that come from entering womanhood. The story shows these two moments come to heed in a thoughtful, understated manner that does not villainize Mira nor Anila for having such hard times coming to these realizations. Talati’s film gives a sense of grace and understanding to the complicated mother-daughter relationship that will make you understand as much as you as a daughter might be struggling to prove to yourself and the world you are your own person, your mother might understand you far more than you believe.

Girls Will Be Girls will have its US Theatrical Premiere on Friday, September 13 at Film Forum, followed by a national specialty roll-out (playdates here). The film will be released in UK cinemas on September 20, 2024.