Young lovers and a mother in a Himalayan triangle

Photo: Preeti Panigrahi) as Mira in Girls Will Be Girls

Daniel Nelson

Girls Will Be Girls will divide audiences.

It’s a slow burn coming-of-age story about two teenagers in a mixed but conservative Himalayan boarding school in the 1990s.

Or rather, it’s a coming of age story about two teenagers and the girl’s mother.

Mum Anila invites daughter Mira’s crush home, as a way of keeping an eye on their burgeoning romance, in order to make sure that attraction and sexual exploration don’t get out of hand and derail her daughter’s starry academic career.

The boy, Sri, far more mature and savvy than his childish compatriots, charms the mother because, as he explains, mum’s approval is the only way they can spend time together.

Or is he finding an older woman’s attention more interesting than the cuteness of the inexperienced daughter?

And, as Mira looks angrily on, does mum realise that her feelings for Sri might not simply be protective, but might be expressions of longing, lust and romance that have become dulled or perhaps never fully experienced?

Director Shuchi Talati unfolds the story with deftness and subtlety, the characters are real, not ciphers for attitudes in Indian life, and the sex is not exploitative. The film perhaps slower than most Western audiences are accustomed to, and the soundtrack is remarkably quiet: no bangs or squealing car tyres here, though there’s a rowdy school scene — a Lord of the Flies moment — towards the end.

But if you are prepared to linger over an understated love triangle, and muse about mother-daughter relationships and about men who cut a swathe through life with an easy sense of what makes people tick (is it an admirable worldliness or self-interested calculation?), you will find this a rewarding watch.