Featuring finely-tuned performances, this Sundance winner breaks taboos in quietly restrained ways, about an Indian girl in a Himalayan boarding school who discovers love and sex amid a repressive patriarchal order.

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Winning multiple awards at Sundance and the Berlinale, Girls Will Be Girls will likely pique the interest of cinephiles on the lookout for Asian films that quietly break taboos. 

A debut feature from Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls features finely-tuned performances, particularly from Preeti Panigrahi, who plays Mira, a studious teenage girl in a boarding school somewhere near the Himalayas. 

At the start of the film, she is newly minted as the school’s head prefect, the first-ever female student to be picked for the role.  Buoyed by the newfound responsibility, she, however, becomes increasingly rebellious in little ways. 

As Sri, an inquisitive boy with a passion for astronomy, becomes infatuated with Mira (who similarly reciprocates), Talati brings us down a somewhat familiar path: the coming-of-age teen romance drama. 

“I want to learn how to touch you.”

Having said that, Girls Will Be Girls feels refreshingly different in its treatment.  Firstly, I love the warmly familiar accented English that these characters speak.  It reminded me of acquaintances from India whom I had the pleasure to converse with over the years. 

Secondly, the theme of discovery—of love and sex—as explored by these young, somewhat naïve characters, is depicted with an awkward authenticity.  Talati doesn’t shy away from depicting her protagonists learning about each other’s bodies or trying out sexual acts. 

Set in a place where the patriarchal order has ruled with an iron fist for centuries, where girls and older women don’t necessarily come of age (Girls Will Be Girls is also about Mira’s love-hate relationship with her mother, who was a student from the same school), each silent glance becomes marked by hidden thoughts and repressed emotions. 

While the film’s pacing is more deliberate than expected, the performances and cultural context make it compelling enough to last all of its two delicate hours.

Grade: B+

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