HKAFF is collaborating with Youth Co-learning Film Journey this year! 7 student juries watched 6 films that echoes to their project annual theme "My Body My Home", selected Student Jury Award with film review that shared they views and feeling towards the film.
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A Gentle Exploration of the Teenage Experience
by Cheung Hei Yiu Huey 張稀堯
“Girls Will Be Girls” is the feature-length debut by Indian director Shunchi Talati. The film tackles many subject matters, teenage sexual awakenings, the expected roles society bestows upon women and the relationship between a mother and daughter, and it is all done in a tender and quiet manner.
Set in the 90’s, the story follows Mira (played by first-time actress Preeti Panigrahi), who is appointed the role of head prefect in her strict boarding school (In real life, Preeti coincidentally was also head prefect in her school). Mira is a top student in class. She is studious. She is rule-abiding. She is also a 16-year-old teenage girl. And as teenagers do, she falls in love. The subject of her affection is Sri (played by Kesav Binoy Kiron) a boy in her class who had just come back to India after studying abroad in Hong Kong. As their relationship develops, Sri is introduced to Mira’s protective mother, Anila (played by Kani Kusruti). Worried that her daughter’s education is going to be affected, Anila was initially hesitant to Sri’s arrival but she eventually warmed up to him. Though perhaps a bit too much, leading into an almost absurd triangle relationship between mother, daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend.
One of the core of the movie that may stand out to some is the character of Anila, Mira’s mother. Anila is a young mother who is constantly trying to relive her youth through her daughter. She is always going back to her daughter’ school, which she also studied in when she was younger. And with every visit from Sri, she almost treats him as if he is her boyfriend, and not Mira’s. As seen in a scene where Mira turned on the boom box and invited Sri to dance with her, their dance only lasted seconds before Anila intruded and stole Sri to be her partner, leaving Mira standing aside bewildered by what happened. Anila’s actions are odd and even somewhat unlikeable at first, but slowly we see that she is a person with many regrets, not content with her emotionally still marriage. As she mentioned, girls were not even allowed to be head prefect back in her day and her mother was adamantly against her dating in her teenage years, so once you realize that she is seeing Mira live an idealized version of her adolescent times, her actions begin to make sense. They are not right, still you cannot help but empathize with her desperate attempt in having a second go at being a teenager, all thanks to Kani Kusruti’s beautifully subtle performance. It deals with the idea of parents being jealous of the lives they created for their children, it’s an absurd idea on paper but the film allows us to view it from the perspective of the parent and provide a nuanced take on the idea.
The teenage years tend to be a messy time where we begin to explore our bodies and be self-conscious about what other people think of us. Through Mira, we really get to see what being a teenager is all about. She is curious about sex, we see her looking up the biology of private parts with Sri in an internet café. We see her figuring out how to kiss someone by kissing her hand in the shower (as seen on the international poster). Those scenes are long and still, with minimal movement from the camera. It is refreshing to see such an honest portrayal of the teenage years. It is often not as glamorous or exciting as other films tend to portray, “Girls Will Be Girls” portrays it in a way that is usually quiet and mildly awkward because that is how teenagers are. Even as the film went on and Mira’s sexual exploration went further along, it retains its awkwardness, which adds to the film’s sense of realness amidst all the drama between mother and daughter.
The title “Girls Will Be Girls” is a play on the phrase “boys will be boys”, which according to the Cambridge dictionary is said to emphasize that people should not be surprised when boys or men act in a rough or noisy fashion because it is part of being a male character. This nature of this phrase is showcased multiple times throughout the film. In Mira’s school, there is this gang of boys who are always loud and up to no good. When Mira sees them taking pictures of girls’ underskirt, she naturally went and reported them to the teacher and yet the teacher’s initial reaction is to brush it aside and ignore it. Yet throughout the film, the teacher is seen lecturing the girls. The girls are not allowed to date, they have to wear their skirts below their knees to prevent boys from peeking at it. There is a massive double standard applied to boys and girls. There is a giant list of rules that girls are expected to follow, not just at school but in society as well, like Anila, who is seemingly trapped playing the role of mother and when we see her do things outside of what mothers are expected to do, we find it odd as well, unknowingly following these invisible rules that we have internalized. The title seems to suggest a rebellion to that very idea, advocating that girls can also do what they want outside of the female character. The idea of rebellion is clearer when you look at Mira’s character, she is a model student adored by teachers, but she is also a teenage girl that falls in love and has sexual desires. The director said she never experienced these things during her time in school, so maybe this film is a rebellion of sorts for her teenage self. The director is reliving her teenage years through Mira, the same way that Anila does. Perhaps in doing so Talati is sending a message for teenage girls watching to know that it is okay for girls to be girls.
