Shuchi Talati is the writer/director of the Sundance award-winning feature, Girls Will Be Girls, which sees Type A teenager, Mira, questioning her devotion to being a good girl when a dashing young student arrives at her boarding school. This feminist coming-of-age tale also sees Mira’s young mother having a parallel awakening that threatens to destroy their already fragile bond.
LWLies: Do you see your work as political?
Get more Little White Lies
Talati: It’s deeply political. I grew up in a context where there was so much shame around female sexuality. As a teenager when I had a boyfriend, I did not tell my best friend because I thought she would judge me. So within that context, I wanted to tell a sexual awakening story where I reflect on the context, but don’t shame her.
What drew you to set the story at the base of the Himalayas?
Well, primarily because that’s where all the boarding schools are, this one we shot in Mussoorie, a town that probably has a hundred boarding schools. I didn’t go to a boarding school but I was really fascinated by them. Enid Blyton is very popular in India, and I exclusively read Enid Blyton until I was 10, and read ‘St Clare’s’ and ‘Malory Towers’ which are both about boarding schools. And I also decided not to do the hustle and bustle and take our cues from the blue vastness of the mountains.
The film eventually narrows its focus onto the human story. Was it ever tempting to make it about those incredible landscapes?
At the beginning Mira feels on top of the world – she becomes the head prefect in the very first scene, and so for that I very much wanted to be on a mountaintop. It’s really like a vestige of power that’s slowly chipped away, and the school becomes less safe and the home, which is her mother’s space, becomes more safe. She starts to spend more time there and it became a much more interior film.
You shot on digital, what other choices did you make to get the look?
Well one was aspect ratio, the taller, 4:3 grain allowed for a lot of headroom and for us to sometimes make Mira small, and situate her in this world that really constricts her movements. And then sometimes we would collapse it and go so close to her that you feel like you can almost hear her thoughts. The lighting sometimes had this hardness – it can feel so harsh up in the Himalayas, even in the foothills. We used it to heighten the emotional conflict and make the frame have more contrast. And then really just a lot of stillness. We searched for months to find the house where much of the film takes place, because it was really important to have sight-lines from one room to the other, so that we could block it in a way that when the mother, daughter and boy are all together, we can really see who’s on the ins, who is on the outs, who can see what, who can’t see what.
What was your approach to the scenes of intimacy?
Transparency from the beginning. Even before the actors met me, I wanted them to read the full script and know what was required so they could ask questions. To me intimacy scenes are an emotional exchange. Yes, you’re physically vulnerable and naked, but you’re also emotionally vulnerable. The choreography was mapped out. I feel like those conversations needed to happen when it was really safe to say no. Even though I acknowledge there is a power dynamic – I’m the director and they’re young actors who want to please me – it’s much harder to say no on a set, where you feel like everyone is waiting. We tried to get as many women on set as possible, as many of them heads of departments. It’s just such a male industry, especially in India, so it was a long hiring process. We did do a closed set to make the actors feel like they were in a cocoon where they could do that kind of work and the two actors are very lovely with each other.
Have there been any reactions to the film that have surprised you?
Because it is such a quiet film, you hope that the audience will get it and go along for the ride. So to hear a chuckle or a gasp at a gesture in a room full of people, it felt that people were with the film every step of the way. I think that was such a relief and very satisfying. The other thing has been lots of young women, a lot of the time emotional, who are so thankful for the film and feel so seen.
