Member Reviews

It is easy, one would imagine, for a filmmaker to be overwhelmed by the words of the great August Wilson. Especially if they’ve never made a film before. Musical and marauding, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s language is a vessel for the ambition and anger of his people. Netflix’s The Piano Lesson — the latest adaptation of Wilson’s celebrated Pittsburgh Cycle of plays — is directed by the debutante Malcolm Washington, whose father, the legendary Denzel Washington, has publicly devoted this stage of his career to shepherding Wilson’s work onto the screen.

Like its protagonist, director Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls is a constantly evolving entity. But behind an outer veneer of control, there is burgeoning angst, a simmering chaos, and a terrible desire to be seen and heard. The psychological drama played to an uncommonly interactive packed crowd at the Dharamshala International Film Festival recently — it was a bizarre screening that exemplified how important it is to watch movies in a community environment. Often, these experiences reveal more about society than the films themselves.

“I won’t allow anything more than a friendship,” decrees Anila (Kani Kusruti), a very mom thing to say. She is sizing up a tall, sweet boy, Srinivas (Kesav Binoy Kiron), who’s drawn her daughter’s affections at their elite, hillside boarding school. The girl, Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), stands at the door and listens. The camera mimics her watchful gaze. It is a simple domestic intervention, yet it thrums with suspense.

We were charmed in 1994. By the story of Simba the lion cub, son of Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands. Scar, the evil force, had provided dramatic confrontation. The freshness of the animated number Circle of Life and the energetic camaraderie of Hakuna Matata have remained on the charts since then. Director Barry Jenkins’ prequel therefore comes with high expectations of a heartwarming, musical entertainer. The screenplay by Jeff Nathanson gives a backstory to Mufasa who died early in the 1994 blockbuster. Who was Simba’s dad?

Girls Will Be Girls is a quietly breathtaking film. It includes several remarkable debuts – starting with writer-director Shuchi Talati. This is her first feature, and she weaves this coming-of-age story of 18-year-old Mira with tenderness, frankness and delicacy. Female teenage sexuality has rarely been captured with this sensitivity and nuance in an Indian film. Second, Preeti Panigrahi who plays Mira. Panigrahi is the find of the year. Without a trace of strain or drama, she captures the myriad emotions coursing through Mira as she discovers passion, sexuality, unbridled rage, a twisted sort of jealousy, resentment, disappointment and eventually, comfort. And third, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal who debut as producers with their company Pushing Buttons Studios. Girls Will Be Girls does this with skill and uncommon grace.

Writer-director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature is a simmering and sexually tense coming of age drama. Set in a boarding school, the story is centred around Mira, a school topper, head prefect and teacher’s pet. She’s driven to excel and considers herself the model student, upholder of school rules and moral gatekeeper. So, it’s confusing for the obedient and righteous Mira to be faced with challenges outside of the curriculum and to realise that book-learned knowledge might be no match against street smarts, life experience and generational patriarchal conditioning.

A brilliant and sensitive schoolgirl in love with a classmate is watched, monitored and scrutinised incessantly as she seeks to break free from familial and societal shackles in Girls Will Be Girls, writer-director Shuchi Talati’s self-assured, award-winning narrative feature debut now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The exquisitely crafted and insightful coming-of-age drama, an Indo-French co-production that bagged two awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, is buoyed by impeccable writing and a couple of consummate performances by debutante Preeti Panigrahi and the seasoned Kani Kusruti.

A house, lived in for years, bulldozed by the Israeli military in front of its inhabitants, leaving behind a pile of tangible memories under the rubble. A youth resisting the burning down of an Olive orchard shot down by a settler with practised ease and nonchalance, just as if it were the most normal thing to do. Soldiers violently barging into every single home in a village in search of an Israeli military man who was abducted.

Sometimes, the most gentle turns in a film can create a considerable emotional impact on the viewer. The filmmaker need not necessarily move a mountain to achieve that. Belgian filmmaker Anthony Schatteman’s Young Hearts, with its fresh take on teenage gay romance, is filled with several such moments that flow organically one after the other. Being screened in the World Cinema section at the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), this rather small film about young people has gained appreciation amid a flurry of bigger films boasting wider festival play.