Girl will be Girls

 "Coming of age" is a description often applied to movies, memoirs, and works of fiction.  The term is a euphemism for a depiction of someone's first sexual encounter or first extended love affair.  Generally, films and literature of this kind imply that the protagonist's first sexual encounter or love affair is a life-changing event imparting a sort of wisdom or new perspective to the hero.  Shuchi Talati's Girls will be Girls (a wretched name) fits squarely within the "coming of age" genre.  The film, released in 2024, is a candid, fairly graphic picture about a sixteen-year-old girl's sexual encounter with a slightly older boy.  The picture is well-made and features excellent performances.  It is also somewhat disturbing.  Although one would expect "coming of age" to be a universal phenomenon, the movie, set at an expensive private high school (what used to be called a College Prep school) in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains is specific to aspects of Indian culture that I found disorienting.  I confess that I'm not sure that I understand the film completely.  Adding to my bemusement are reviews of the picture that suggest that it's a sort of comedy -- in fact, the picture isn't funny at all and its tone is melancholy and enigmatic.  In an opening scene, we see the students at the private school marshalled on a terrace that seems to be suspended hundreds of feet over some kind of mountain gorge -- humid shadowy peaks, ragged with forests and veiled in clouds, lurk in the background.  It's a peculiar setting and reminds me inescapably of the convent in the Himalayan mountains in Pressburger and Powell's Black Narcissus with its immense and abysmal chasm opening up underfoot at the very threshold of the nuns' chapel and dormitories.  The exotic elements aren't foregrounded in Girls will be Girls but they lurk around the edges of the film's narrative.  "Coming of Age" denotes loss of innocence and, even, defloration, and there is inevitably something sad about this topic -- paradise lost is our pre-sexual childhood from which are forcibly expelled by coitus.  The sense of sex as a loss of innocence is captured powerfully in a scene in which the 16-year old heroine masturbates.  Mira, the protagonist, sometimes looks like a child in the movie; in other scenes, she is filmed  to emphasize the womanly contours of her body -- in some shots, we see a petulant little girl with a voluptuous body.  In the masturbation scene, Mira turns her body away from the camera so that the image's emphasis is on her broad hips and buttocks.  When she has satisfied herself, we see that she is clutching a stuffed animal, possibly a teddy bear.  

Mira is the top girl at the school.  She's the number one student in her form and has been appointed as Prefect, that is, a student leader entrusted with keys to the dormitories and the obligation to supervise (and even discipline) other pupils.  In the first scene, she leads the students in a pledge of allegiance to the school and to "our age-old Indian culture."  The education is rigorous.  This is an elite Indian prep school and the students are mercilessly bullied to achieve academic excellence.  Mira is complicit with powers that control the school.  A tall handsome student recently enrolled in the school expresses interest in Mira.  At a meeting of the "Astronomy Club" that the boy has founded -- he is the son of a diplomat to Hong Kong -- Mira flirts with him.  The young man, Srinvas, responds -- he's 18 and has had some sexual experience.  He and Mira engage in furtive meetings that progress from kissing to mutual masturbation to full penetrative sex.  The relationship is complicated by Mira's mother, Anila.  The first time we see Anila, it's obvious that she embodies pure carnal lust -- although it's all bottled up in her voluptuous figure and dark eyes..  Anila is unhappily married and she intervenes aggressively in Mira's relationship with Srinvas, overtly flirting with the handsome young man and, ultimately, protecting her daughter's virginity (unsuccessfully as it turns out) by sharing a bed with Srinvas during sleepovers.  This aspect of the movie, portrayed in a curious matter-of-fact and circumstantial fashion, is alarming -- nothing happens between Mira's boyfriend and Anila so far as we can see, but there's no doubt that Srinvas is impressed by smoldering sexuality of the older woman and, certainly, enjoys sharing a bed with her.  (In one scene, Mira wants Srinvas to wake up so they can study together -- Srinvas refuses to get out of Anila's bed.)  Of course, the sexual relationship distracts Mira from her studies and her school work suffers.  The movie features a peculiar climax.  The other students detect a change in Mira and begin to bully her.  (She has rejected the "proposal" of another boy, a kid with the suggestive name of Hardick.)  A sort of festival involving role reversals occurs -- the teachers either are absent or treated as students; the students assume the role of teachers.  It's called "Teacher's Day."  During this revelry, the kids refuse to recite the school pledge and openly disobey Mira's commands.  Then, in a frightening sequence, a mob of about 20 boys chases Mira, apparently to gang-rape her.  She narrowly escapes, locking herself in a room high in the residential school.  Anila comes to rescue her on a motor bike, a sort of scooter.  Mira is disenchanted with Srinvas who seems to be master manipulator and seducer.  She reconciles with her mother and, in the last scene, we see her anointing her mother's head with oil.  Srinvas tells Mira that every person has a key, referring to the little keys entrusted to Mira as prefect, but also to the key to a person's psychology.  Anila's key is that she wants to be liked for her cooking; Mira's key is that she detests bullshit.  It is implied by the film that Srinvas' key is that he is an unapologetic egoist, interested only in his own pleasure.  

There are some interesting things in this film -- the performance by Preeti Panigrahi as Mira is formidable, moving, and memorable.  Srinvas is first portrayed as a sort of gawky, teenage boy, a science nerd longing for a girlfriend, but, as the film progresses, his character emerges as predatory, manipulative, self-serving -- he is, like his father, a kind of diplomat.  Anila is like a bonfire of lust and you can't take your eyes off her.  Parts of the film are either incoherent or arise in the context of Indian customs that I couldn't understand.  "Teacher's day" which involves elaborate ritual "draping" of saris on the female students is inexplicable.  Mira lives at the residential school but, also, at her mother's home nearby, a sort of mansion.  We don't find out until the climax that Mira's mother is close enough to ride to her rescue on the little motor scooter that has to labor up the switchbacks to eyrie of the school.  The relationship between Mira and her father (and the relationship between Anila and her husband) is vague and hard to grasp.  The father is a complete cipher.  The attack of the boys at the film's climax seems overwrought and unrealistic, a gross overreaction to Mira's imperious dismissal of Hardick.  This sequence reads as some sort of feminist allegory of the price that girl's pay for their sexuality.  I don't have any explanation why a feral mob of twenty or more lads would suddenly pursue the most popular and important girl in the school.  It's certainly not clear when the story is supposed to be taking place.  There are no computers and Mira carries a clunky, walkie-talkie sort of cell phone -- although it's important that she has the cell-phone during the attack on her.  

The film is completely deracinated. Almost all the dialogue is in heavily accented, musical Indian-English but sometimes the characters speak phrases or commands in Hindi.  As a nod to Bollywood, there are two song-and-dance numbers featuring sinuous, serpentine dancing by the two female leads -- however, since the general texture of the movie is realistic, these scenes utilize diegetic sound:  someone turns on a radio or CD player to generate the dance rhythms and singing to which the characters dance.  (I find the dance scenes in Indian movies both silly and incredibly interesting.)  I counted, at least, 26 producing companies for this film, including the Uttarakhand Film Council, BFI, German TV, and the New York State and Brooklyn film authorities.  My guess is that the director, although born in India, lives in either Hollywood or New York.  The film's premiere was a SxSW in Austin, Texas.