In the Land of Feral Girls

Big Girls Don’t Cry | Cast: Pooja Bhatt, Avantika Vandanapu, Aneet Padda, Dalai, Vidushi, Lhakyila, Afrah Sayed and Akshita Sood | Director: Nitya Mehra | Hindi | Prime Video

Girlhood isn’t always the magical period it’s painted as. Yes, it can be fun and feisty but feral too, with raging hormones, evolving opinions, and growing pains. There haven’t been too many explorations of adolescence in Mumbai cinema but all that is changing now. School of Lies was a notable addition to the small list, as is Shuchi Talati’s movie, Girls Will Be Girls. Big Girls Don’t Cry makes up for the lack of quantity with a smartly written, sharply observed and beautifully shot series set in a swish boarding school. There is an array of representations, all embodied in characters brought to life by a mostly fresh cast. There is the potential head girl, with an international academic career well within her sights; there is a princess of Nepal expected to carry on her bankrupt family legacy; there is a basketball sharpshooter struggling with her sexuality; there is another young woman desperate to lose her virginity; and there is a fresh-off-the-boat girl who may or may not be a scholarship student. Are they a pack of entitled wolves or young women finding their own identities inflicting unintended cruelties along the way? The series weaves in icons from the past, from Subhadra Kumari Chauhan to Savitribai Phule, while bringing in issues of class and sexuality with a light touch. Presiding over all this is a stern Pooja Bhatt, the headmistress, who is in the country-shaping business, and not running a burger joint with a franchise, but is in need of funds to expand her school. There are parents, forgetful, artistic, nurturing, and grasping. We are our legacy, is the recurring motto of the school. The mantra for the girls? Fight for who you are. Fight for what is fair.

Why watch it? Three words: Heartbreaking, moving, refreshing

The Madness of Queen Kate

The Regime | Cast: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts Creator: Will Tracy | English | JioCinema

She speaks with a fierce lisp, panics when she breathes another human’s breath, speaks to her late father’s corpse, and has a guard walk in front of her to check the humidity in the air. She also governs a Central European country which has cobalt in plenty with which America wants to power its Teslas. Should she align with them, as her Cabinet advisers are telling her to do, or break all ties and go rogue as her newest adviser, a brutal and brutalised soldier is telling her? What she chooses will determine the fate of her nation, her people and indeed of herself. Kate Winslet is having the time of her life, with powerful performances which expand opportunities for women of a certain age. Whether she is collapsing from having inhaled someone’s breath or sending someone to purgatory or indeed inhaling the purifying aroma of boiling potatoes or sacking someone because his jaws click while he eats, she is like a starving lioness. Nothing can stop her.

Why watch it? To see how absolute power can corrupt absolutely

Big Girls Don’t CryentertainmentJiocinemaPrime Videostreaming businessThe Regime