← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Girls Will Be Girls,' a Coming-of-Age Story in India
00:20:12
A new movie about coming of age at an Indian boarding school opens tomorrow at Film Forum.
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This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Girls Will Be Girls is opening tomorrow at Film Forum after winning two awards at Sundance this year. Mira, a high achiever at a boarding school in India who is trying to balance her studies, parents expectations and duties as head prefect while also trying to explore new romantic feelings with boys. We see Mira push back against patriarchal obstacles that give advantages to boys in her school. And we observe her loving yet complicated relationship with her mother, who faces her own challenges as a women in society. Girls Will Be Girls is the feature debut by writer and director Suchi Talita. Nice to meet you.
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D
Very nice to be here.
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B
And actor Preeti Panigrahi, who stars as Mira. Hi Preeti.
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D
Hello.
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E
I'm really thrilled to be here.
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B
So nice to have you. So to start out, in this first scene in the movie, we see Mira, she's assigned head prefect, which is like a student leader, I guess, for us who sort of integrate with the administration and students. But why did you want this to be the first characteristic that we learned about Mira, that she has been made head prefect?
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D
That's a great question, because when you're made head prefect, you are put in this impossible position where you are sort of supposed to rat your classmates, fellow classmates out to the teachers and police them. So they follow the school's very strict and traditional rules, which include monitoring girls, skirt lengths, monitoring girls so that they're not talking too much to boys. So I wanted to put her in this kind of impossible position as she falls in love and wants to kind of experiences a sexual awakening.
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Preeti, why is Mira as head prefect such a big deal? For her.
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E
It'S just the way this girl has grown up. There are a lot of expectations from her. The way her parents have brought her Up. It's just to be like an achiever, to get good grades and to always, you know, be this model student. So I think this head girl or the head prefect dream was something she's been seeing for a really long time. And I think the beginning of this film is like a very important milestone we start the film with. And then, you know, taking that pledge is just so symbolic because eventually we just see that Meera really struggling to keep up with the pledge and kind of understanding that how, you know, this pledge is really something that her inner heart does not. Does not, you know, fall for.
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Pretty soon after becoming prefect, a boy that's new to the school starts to talk to her. It's clear he likes her. She's intrigued by him.
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B
Suji, what are some of the spoken.
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And unspoken rules surrounding boys and girls intermingling at this school?
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D
Well, the unspoken. Well, the spoken rules are, you know, they stay in different dorms and they often, like, sit separately in classes or cafeteria. But the unspoken rules are that really they shouldn't fraternize too much. I mean, forget dating. Dating is so far away. But even, like, talking too much to a boy can get into trouble. So if they are having a private conversation in school and some teachers walk by, Mira immediately pulls away. And it's particularly interesting because she is the first girl to. To become head prefect of this school where, like, she's given this position of power. But at the same time, girls are monitored so much more than boys. So you also see that it's so fragile. Girls can fall from grace so easily.
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Preeti, when you were thinking about Mira, what excites her about this relationship, this relationship with she Sri.
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I think Meera is at a very interesting age in her life where, you know, there are new thoughts in her head apart from just, you know, getting her grades. Right. It's. It's like this aging, hormonal, you know, urge that in her mind to, you know, know how. How it feels to kiss a boy and you know, how it feels to pleasure yourself. So I think it's. It's this very interesting, you know, chapter in her life where she just meets this boy and she realizes that, you know, I can totally experiment and not in a manipulative way because she was really just out there looking for love. Because it's also something so refreshing what she's been used to, like the rules and the discipline. What this boy was bringing to her life was something really refreshing and something she wanted to, you know, experiment for a really long time. But also in this experimentation she wanted that to be like perfect. She wanted to get an A plus in that experimentation too. So she made sure she's doing everything by the book. She's doing everything just to make her first kiss perfect. So Mira being Mira, so Jiwin, the.
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F
Movie is very sensual in many ways. We see the mirror kissing her own wrist to kind of get the feeling of it. We see her pleasuring herself at one point. Why was that such an important part of this movie?
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D
You know, growing up, I grew up in India and I never saw any female desire or female sexuality from a female gaze. Of course, there are Bollywood films that have actually very sexy dance sequences which are almost like simulated sex if you look at the choreography. But there is nothing that feels real. And for me, it was really important to see characters like myself as sexual beings to explore sexuality with all its nuances. And the other important thing was that in Bollywood cinema, often if there is a sexy woman, she's the bad woman, you know, or when she, by the time towards the end of the film, she becomes marriageable, she'll be more demure. She wants to go to the temple. So, you know, there has to be a kind of taming of women before they can be acceptable. And I wanted with Girls Will Be Girls to have Mira, who's a very good girl and she's a sexual being and we love her. And I wanted to do that like without any of the surrounding, any of the shame that I grew up with around sexuality.
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We're talking about the girls will be Girls. The film Girls will be Girls it will be opening at Film form tomorrow. I'm speaking with its star Preeti Panagrahi as well as writer, director. Is it Suchi or Shuchi? Shuchi Talita. Preeti, the Mira's mom sees, wants her to prioritize her studies first of all. And she founds that she's made this friend, this new friend, Sri, and she quickly tells him they can only be friends. That's it. What does Mira's mom see in SRI.
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That has her worried for Mira?
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I think it's not just Meera's mom. Almost all these moms who have these young daughters have this fear that, you know, maybe she's getting a boyfriend, especially in school. Because we kind of see, you know, talking to a boy as a distraction. And it could be something that could like put her off from studies. It could be something that could just like bring her to another mess. So initially I felt like Anila was really scared that, you know, this boy is going to ruin her Mira's way, Mira's perfect way to school. But eventually I think she started finding this long lost feelings in her which was something which Anila did not ever experience. Her own coming of age. And when she just saw her daughter and she saw that how her daughter is having her own fun time, her own youthful times, then something in Anila was kind of like sparking again. Like that kind of energy that she was getting from. She was like kind of sparking again. It was reconnecting her own, you know, long lost desires.
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Yeah. It's interesting in the film Suchi that.
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The mom starts to sort of have.
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Feelings, some kind of feelings towards Sri.
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In fact, both of them are competing for his attention at one point. Why did you want to have this dynamic slowly build between the mother and Sri over the course of the movie?
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Well, you're right, like the mom is a very complicated character and arouses a lot of mixed feelings. You know, she's being protective of her daughter, but she's trying to give her daughter freedoms that she didn't have. So instead of being the typical Indian mom who would be like, no way, no boyfriend, you are grounded. She's like, well, let him come home. You know, you can study here. Yeah, study under my supervision. And then she also gets a little thrilled because the boy is interested in her and he wants to know about her. And for me this was important because this story is not just about Mira, but it's about two generations of women who are both sort of pushing against the bounds of what is allowed for them. So this mother who is a young mom, she's. I wrote her in the script as 39 who has a 16 year old daughter. She's a young woman who is sort of just forced into living this supporting role in her daughter and her husband's life. And I just thought, why shouldn't she have desire? Why shouldn't she want to flirt? You briefly see her husband and it doesn't seem like they're having the greatest time. No, not having the greatest time. That is so yeah, I wanted to explore that and allow her that and see it with all of. Mira sometimes hates it, but also has. As a writer, I feel compassion for that character.
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Yeah, Mira, when you think about the character. Excuse me, Preeti. When Mira thinks about the character, is it jealousy that she's experiencing seeing her mom and Sri?
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It's jealousy. And it's also, I think, a lack of understanding of her own mother because that's a very common experience for teenagers. I too, as Preeti would have A lot of times misunderstood my mom because sometimes she's really just coming from a place of care and love and protection. But the way these actions we youngsters tend to translate is kind of very negative. Like we kind of misread our parents intentions. So I really love the fact that in the film we kind of, through Mira's perspective, develop an understanding for our own parents and kind of see where they're coming from. And although initially we do see that Mira has a lot of hate and a lot of jealousy and she really is not comfortable the way Sri and Anila are going about. But eventually she does understand that, you know, it's her mom that she really needs to focus on right now. It's a mom she really needs to love at this point, not any other boy.
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The movie is set in an Indian boarding school in the surrounding neighborhood. Can you tell us a little more about the location, Shuchi?
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D
Yeah. So the film is set in the Himalayan foothills in a town called Mussoorie. And it's funny, there are a few mountain Thames in India which have this unusually high concentration of boarding school. So this particular town, I would say it probably has 100 boarding schools.
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Really?
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Yeah. And so it was kind of natural for me to set the film there. But another reason why was that the landscape was very important was when Mira becomes head prefect in the very beginning of the film, we are in these grounds that are on top of a mountain and we feel what she feels. Literally and figuratively. She's on top of the world and she feels powerful, you know. And so that location really allowed me to express her kind of her emotional state.
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What is something from this film that you would only know if you had gone to one of these boarding schools that if, you know, you know.
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Oh, if you know, you know.
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I.
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Would say, God, so many things, you know, the teachers, the teachers who are both. They're sort of half parental figures but half also like policing you. And you develop these very complicated relationships with them where you care about them, you want them to approve of you. And at the same time you're always sneaking around. I think, oh my God, the feeling of always being caught, like constantly being close to getting caught when you're sneaking around and breaking the rules and doing the things that you shouldn't be doing, because of course we were all doing them.
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Did you have any experiences that you could pull on from your own time in school?
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Of course. I was Mira in my high school, apart from the boyfriend and, you know, apart from having a nagging mother. I just I was the head prefect and I was going around disciplining my friends to wear proper uniforms and to not have colorful nail polish. But I would, like, really, really. I really appreciate Mira because she just really went on and explored her sexuality and had that independence. Because when I was growing up, I was really just afraid of these things. And I always was just fearful of getting caught also because my mom was in the school. So I could not have. I could not have at all. So it's just imagine Anila being right next to you all the time when in school you're experimenting all this. So I could not have, you know, gone on with the, you know, experimentation. But it was really refreshing to get into Mira's shoes and kind of relive how I used to be in high school, but also to get into these shoes a couple of years after high school. Because then I could really understand what Shruti was trying to do with the film. Could really understand how all of these rules from school had. They did not make any sense. And I had no business being so scared of, you know, kissing a boy back then.
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Shuchi, you found Preeti in an open casting call?
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D
Yes.
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What was that audition process like?
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D
Oh, my God, it was so long. But, yeah, we started casting months before we had to shoot because I knew. I mean, we all knew this film lives or dies by its performances. And we were working with this amazing, very senior casting director. His name is Dilip Shankar. He cast like a bunch of Mira Nair's films. And I think months in, we hadn't found our Mira. And then Preity's audition came in and he had a little spreadsheet where he would, like, put in auditions that he liked. And I saw it and I was immediately. I immediately called him. I was like, did you see this new girl? And he was like, yeah. He was like, I just didn't wanna tell you. It was because the audition scene was when Mira talks to her love interest for the first time on the roof at this astronomy club under the stars. Very sweet. And a lot of the girls who were auditioning kept playing it very coy, batting their eyelids, being kind of sh. And I just didn't feel it was Mira. And the direction I would always give them was, you are the head prefect. And Preity, having been head prefect, played it just right where she liked this boy. But she had a dignity about her, you know, she wasn't going to bat her eyelids. She had a strength. And that strength for Mira was essential. And I can't tell you, we were so delighted when we saw her.
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Preeti, do you remember making that tape? What was on your mind when you were making that tape?
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I think just, just the, the, the scene where I was supposed to talk to Sri, all of those emotions came quite naturally to me. Like, I have to not show this boy that I'm really, really into you right now. But I'm just gonna, you know, hold that face and I'm gonna hold that, strengthen me and not give in so quickly. But also I think the. Another interesting audition that we, you know, Anila and Meera have like a dance off and that was really fun to shoot. And I also showed that to my mom and she was really excited about it. She's like, yay, you're auditioning for a mother daughter film. So we both were really excited to film that. And at that time, I had no idea what the scene meant and where Shuchi was leading that to. So I was really curious. Like, it was a very, very interesting audition to do as an actor to, you know, be curious about what the film is all about.
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Suchi, there's a moment in the film.
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When Mira makes a tape for Sri, but he says he couldn't listen to it because he didn't have his Walkman. So this.
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What era does this take place in?
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It's in the late 90s and you won't not enjoy the film if you don't get it. But for me, it's a very special time because one, I was a teenager then and there's some nostalgia. There's about, you know, when we didn't have Facebook or cell phones, we really had to do these elaborate ways of communicating with each other through the landline and sneak around. So I wanted to do that. But second, the 90s were actually a very important and interesting time in India. So the Indian economy, which had been protected since independence, had been closed to Western imports. But in the 90s, for the first time, the economy was open up. So you could get Western pop culture, you could get a pair of Levi's, you could buy a McDonald's burger. And for teenagers then that became a way for us to express rebellion. You know, get a pair of jeans, wear a miniskirt. And in the film we see that Mira does that, but also her mom does that. Her mom does not dress in traditional Indian clothes. She doesn't wear a sari. She wants to partake in this rebellion that her daughter's generation is, you know, has access to. So it was also a way to set Anila aside, like apart from all the other moms and teachers.
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F
Preeti, I know the movie was shot with a mostly female crew behind the camera. How do you think that affected you as an actor?
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E
Like, since the very beginning of, you know, even since I got the script, Dilip Shankar sir told me that, you know, there'll be intimacy involved, but he also gave me this confidence that, you know, it's Shuchi who's doing it. So you go ahead, see her work. And before getting on set, I was really confident that the team she's bringing in and all these women around me, they will definitely make me feel safe and they will definitely ensure that there's nothing out there on the screen that is going to eventually haunt me. Because intimacy can go wrong on set. And if an actor is not having that space to be vulnerable, then it's going to be one of the very bad experiences they have. And I was so, so surprised and so taken aback by how special the set felt. Every time we went in for an intimate scene, you know, immediately the boom mics would go to the women. The clap box. I'm sorry, the clapboard would go to a woman. And we just had a few of them, few of us around. And we had so many notes being shared across, like, especially in the masturbation scene, like how you can use a teddy bear. So it was a very, very special moment. And I had no, no trouble, you know, putting my pants down in scenes like that.
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The name is Girls Will be Girls. It opens tomorrow at Film Form. New York magazine called it the best film at this year's Sundance. My guests have been Preeti Panigrahi and Shuji Talita.
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D
Talati.
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Taleta.
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Talati. Thank you.
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Thank you. Thank you for being in studio. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Preeti.
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D
Thank you, Alison.
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Thank you so much.
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I'm Alison Sterret. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.
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Time.
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