Girls Will Be Girls

own life into her writing. It’s a joy to have her as someone allowing you to look back at the time when young girls at co-ed school were given positions of power, but no one else was specifically taught how to respect their authority. Held to a higher standard, Mira’s principal expects her to tell her best friend to stop hanging out with a boy, but also has to be goaded by Mira to take action against boys taking inappropriate pictures of female students. Devika Shahani, who plays the school principal Bansal, can barely make eye contact when Mira tells her about these miscreants, but gladly holds a school meeting showing girls what length their skirts should be. These dual standards are visible to us s adult viewers, the film doesn’t make this character a villain, or the opportunity to declare its activism. Principal Bansal isn’t an evil cartoon, but she is a teacher we have ALL known at some point in our lives, an amalgam of our very early influences, passing on generational trauma to be honest. The film asks to break the cycle of trauma. Mira’s mother Anila wants to be her best friend, through the film you see her toe the line between disciplinarian and co-conspirator against the patriarchy. A product of the same systems, Anila is dependent on her husband for money, but doesn’t see the problem with the way things are clearly enough to become a shield for her daughter, as most mothers we have known. The way their relationship evolves makes you want to root for them both.