Girls Will Be Girls

The three lead players carry the film. Kesav Binoy Kiron adds the right dollop of barely-there smarm to his charm, and when Panigrahi, winsome and knowing, Kusruti, worn and blow-your-socks-off-sexy, are facing off, you can’t take your eyes off either.

[Shuchi Talati] wonderfully crafts a film that dwells on girlhood, the mother-daughter relationship and the quiet, personal moments – like dancing alone to a song – when girls can be themselves, unfettered by expectations, rules and gendered power games.

It’s typical of the deadpan realism that the India-born and New York-based film-maker Shuchi Talati brings to a movie that sits neatly between Diary of a Teenage Girl and Imitation of Life, and yet is also culturally and painfully specific.

Talati’s work with her young cast is first-rate; this sensitively handled coming-of-age picture deservedly won an audience prize at Sundance earlier this year.

It's beautifully done.

There’s something almost Malory Towers-like about the way the school is portrayed, with its idiosyncrasies, its own language and way of doing things. As for Panigrahi, it’s hard to believe this is her first lead role.

The tender thrill of first romance is present, but it’s painfully complicated by a forbidden familial intrusion, turning sweetness into something far more fraught and haunting.

... one of this year's must-see debuts. [Full review in Spanish]

Girls Will Be Girls is not a typical love story, it is about how human minds work.

The screenplay by Talati is subtle and detailed.