Duties and Desires

IN THE STILL hours of morning, students of a boarding school in the Himalayan foothills gather for their assembly, where 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) has just been named head prefect, the first girl to earn the position. As head pre­fect, Mira leads the students in taking the school pledge to “honour and live ac­cording to our age-old Indian culture.” The strict gender norms and double standards that “our age-old Indian culture” entails in this school hint at an all-too-familiar, deeply institution­alised hypocrisy. Girls are cautioned against mixing with boys, policed on the length of their skirts and taught to be ashamed of their sexuality; boys take illicit photos of girls, make unwelcome romantic advances and respond with aggression when rejected. If girls are made to internalise repression and cen­sor themselves, boys externalise repres­sion through pathological outlets. All the while, teachers wag their disapproving fingers at the girls even when it is the boys who have been caught with their pants down.

Repression is a generational issue in Girls Will Be Girls. The Sundance-crowned debut feature from Shuchi Talati is a sensitive double portrait of a daughter and a mother essaying to emerge from culturally en­forced cocoons. The film took home the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, 2024, with Panigrahi earning a Special Jury Award for her revelatory performance.

Mira is a victim of “our age-old Indian culture” same as her mother Anila (Kani Kusruti). As Mira navigates a secret romance, newfound desires and the travails of adolescence, Anila finds herself living vicariously through her daughter—a do-over of the coming-of-age journey she was denied as a young woman. If “boys will be boys” has be­come a get-out-of-jail card to excuse bad behaviour, the title here becomes an assertive statement of female sexuality, while doubling as a reflection on how our culture tries to hardwire women into repressing it. Though Talati sets her film in the 1990s, there is a timeless resonance to Mira and Anila’s story.

Not unlike Mira and Anila, writer-director Talati and breakout star Panigrahi too attended regimented schools. Both were “studious types,” as Talati terms it. “I was the kid who would get straight ‘A’s in school. I was the head girl who would discipline people to wear their socks and proper shoes,” says Panigrahi. “But now that I’m out of school, I realise a lot of these rules made no sense.” Talati looks back at the tiny acts of student rebellion that informed the development of her story and Mira’s tactics. “My friends got up to all kinds of shenanigans—having elaborate signals with landlines or sneaking around or rolling down their socks and then pull­ing them up,” she says.

Sharing some of the same traits, experiences and inner conflicts as Mira meant Panigrahi intrinsically under­stood the role. Talati says, “The main job for an actor is to really understand the emotional landscape of the character and to be able to inhabit it. Once they know that, you put them in any situa­tion, they can react as the character. I feel extremely lucky that Preeti just had it from the very first audition.” Making her feature debut the same as direc­tor Talati, Panigrahi sparks with the same intelligence as her character. Her searching eyes open a portal into the complex inner life of a teenager whose sexual awakening leaves her empow­ered one moment, vulnerable the next.

Desire finds its way around even the most tenacious grip of repression. For Mira, her desires and her duties come into conflict with the arrival of a new student named Srinivas aka Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), the charming son of a diplomat who has just transferred from an international school in Hong Kong. The two flirt for the first time during a late-night stargazing session, after Mira enforces a curfew on the other students. Romance blooms on the hush so it doesn’t risk her reputation in school. Once a boarding school student herself, Anila isn’t oblivious. She encourages Mira to bring Sri to their house so the two can study together and enjoy the odd homecooked meal, in effect chaperon­ing their romance under her watchful eye. As their romance becomes a vehicle for reclaiming her own arrested ado­lescence, Anila becomes torn between supporting her daughter and competing with her daughter for Sri’s attention. The strength of Kusruti’s performance lies in how she challenges the viewer to with­hold their judgement of Anila.

Working with a more seasoned actor like Kusruti was a vital learning experience for a gifted newcomer like Panigrahi, who credits her co-star for cre­ating the baseline that guided her own performance: “Our cinematographer (Jih-E Peng) would say that Kani could change worlds with the blink of an eye. I agree with her because I learnt a lot from her gaze. So, I kind of absorbed that and I think it shows in the film.”

Indeed, it does. Each glance, each silence, each stolen moment is charged with tension. Talati and Peng bring to life the push-pull dynamic of a mother-daughter pair and the excitement of a first romance through shots of hands reaching out and drawing away, fingers interlocking, and eyes exchanging jaundiced stares. As to the use of hands as a visual motif, Talati says it was often the actors who were improvising. Part of Panigrahi’s own process involved tapping into the intention behind each scene. As she explains, “Before shooting a scene, Shuchi would give an intention to me. It could be a very severe line like, ‘I hate this woman. I want to kill her.’ Next, I would not verbalise these lines. I would not go and say the same thing. But I will have these intentions in my head. So, that is how eventually they got projected.”

For a film about a young woman on a journey of sexual self-discovery, the almost mundane depiction of masturbation, without the intention of shaming or titillating, may be one of its more quietly radical moments. “When I reached the set, I did not have an idea that you could use a teddy bear or a soft toy that way,” says Panigrahi with a chuckle. Instead of a young woman reacting to being sexualised, the film normalises a young woman expressing her sexuality. As Mira learns, it can be messy but also liberating. “I do feel that our film pushes the boundary and does it in a way where female sexuality is not shown as a kind of joke, not something to be embarrassed about. We do it with frankness, without it being exploit­ative.” Shooting with a mostly female crew on set helped ensure a safe envi­ronment for a young actor expressing her sexuality, while also transforming the collaborative process. Panigrahi tips her hat to her director. “Shuchi gave us this liberty that you don’t have to stick to the lines. You don’t have to stick to the directions written on the script. You can reach your place emotionally, wherever it leads you.” Having recog­nised actors like Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal on board as producers and believing in their vision also brought “immense strength and insight” to the whole shooting process, she adds.

Girls Will Be Girls, which is Chadha and Fazal’s maiden production venture, is rightfully being hailed by juries and critics. “Going to Sundance was a great experience because it introduced us to a global audience,” says Panigrahi. “The entire process of working in this film has been a journey with my parents too. Discussions about sexuality have opened up in my house.” The film may have premiered to a great reception abroad and started a necessary conver­sation in her own home. But Panigrahi, Talati and their whole team know the film faces its litmus test when it releases in India. How will audiences respond in a country where female sexuality is stigmatised and often censored? How will the Central Board of Film Certi­fication respond? Panigrahi makes a passionate plea: “The film should be out there in its original form because ultimately what we want to do is open a dialogue. At the end of the day, we want even schools to retrospect on their rules. This film is based in the ’90s but so many of the rules are still there in our schools. So, I really hope that there is a dialogue about sexuality and all the absurd rules in schools.” Talati agrees but remains hopeful. “It’s important that the film is seen in its intact form in India, because it is made for Indians.”

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