Alison Stewart: 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 woman in society. Girls Will Be Girls is the feature debut by writer and director Shuchi Talati. Nice to meet you.

Shuchi Talati: Very nice to be here.

Alison Stewart: And actor Preeti Panigrahi, who stars as Mira. Hi, Preeti.

Preeti Panigrahi: Hello. I'm really thrilled to be here.

Alison Stewart: So nice to have you. Shuchi, 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. Why did you want this to be the first characteristic that we learned about Mira, that she has been made head prefect?

Shuchi Talati: 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 this 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. 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.

Alison Stewart: Preeti, why is Mira as head prefect such a big deal for her?

Preeti Panigrahi: 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 be this model student. I think this head girl or the head prefect dream was something she's been seeing for a really long time. I think the beginning of this film is like a very important milestone we start the film with and then taking that pledge is just so symbolic because eventually we just see that Mira really struggling to keep up with the pledge and kind of understanding that how this pledge is really something that her inner heart does not fall for.

Alison Stewart: 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. Shuchi, what are some of the spoken and unspoken rules surrounding boys and girls intermingling at this school?

Shuchi Talati: Well, the spoken rules are they stay in different dorms and they often sit separately in classes or cafeterias, but the unspoken rules are that really, they shouldn't fraternize too much. I mean, forget dating. Dating is so far away, but even talking too much to a boy can get into trouble. If they are having a private conversation in school and some teachers walk by, Mira immediately pulls away. It's particularly interesting because she is the first girl to become head prefect of this school where she's given this position of power.

At the same time, girls are monitored so much more than boys. You also see that it's so fragile. Girls can fall from grace so easily.

Alison Stewart: Preeti, when you were thinking about Mira, what excites her about this relationship, this relationship with Sri?

Preeti Panigrahi: I think Mira is at a very interesting age in her life where there are new thoughts in her head apart from just getting a grade. It's like this aging hormonal urge that in her mind to know how it feels to kiss a boy and know how it feels to pleasure yourself. I think it's this very interesting chapter in her life where she just meets this boy and she realizes that I can totally experiment. 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, the rules and the discipline.

What this boy was bringing to her life was something really refreshing and something she wanted to experiment for a really long time. Also in this experimentation, she wanted that to be perfect. She wanted to get an A-plus in that experimentation too. She made sure she's doing everything by the book. She's doing everything just to make her first kiss perfect. Mira being Mira.

Alison Stewart: Shuchi, the movie is very sensual in many ways. We see Mira 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?

Shuchi Talati: 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. For me, it was really important to see characters like myself as sexual beings. To explore sexuality with all its nuances. The other important thing was that in Bollywood cinema, often if there is a sexy woman, she's the bad woman. Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Shuchi Talati: By the time towards the end of the film, she becomes marriageable, she'll be more demure. She wants to go to the temple. There has to be a kind of taming of women before they can be acceptable. I wanted Girls Will Be Girls to have Mira, who's a very good girl and she's a sexual being and we love her. I wanted to do that without any of the any of the shame that I grew up with around sexuality.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the Girls Will Be Girls. The film Girls Will Be Girls, will be opening at Film Forum tomorrow. I'm speaking with its star, Preeti Panagrahi, as well as writer-director-- Is it Suchi or Shuchi?

Shuchi Talati: Shuchi.

Alison Stewart: Shuchi Talati. Preeti, Mira's mom wants her to prioritize her studies, first of all. She found out 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 that has her worried for Mira?

Preeti Panigrahi: I think it's not just Mira's mom. Almost all these moms who have these young daughters have this fear that maybe she's getting a boyfriend, especially in school, because we kind of see talking to a boy as a distraction. It could be something that could put her off from studies. It could be something that could just bring her to another mess. Initially, I felt like Anila was really scared that this boy is going to ruin her. Mira's perfect way to school. 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.

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 sparking again. Like that kind of energy that she was getting Sri. She was like kind of sparking again. It was reconnecting her own long-lost desires.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's interesting in the film, Shuchi, that the mom starts to sort of have feelings, some kind of feelings towards Sri. 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?

Shuchi Talati: Well, you're right. The mom is a very complicated character and arouses a lot of mixed feelings. She's being protective of her daughter, but she's trying to give her daughter freedoms that she didn't have. 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 can study under my supervision. Then she also gets a little thrilled because the boy is interested in her and he wants to know about her. 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.

This mother, who is a young mom, 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. 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--

Alison Stewart: The greatest time.

Shuchi Talati: No, not having the greatest time. 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.

Alison Stewart: Mira, when you think about the [unintelligible 00:09:57] Preeti, when Mira thinks about the character, is it jealousy that she's experiencing seeing her mom and Sri?

Preeti Panigrahi: 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. I really love the fact that in the film, we kind of, through Mira's perspective, develop an understanding for our own parents and see where they're coming from.

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 it's her mom that she really needs to focus on right now and some mom she really needs to love at this point, not any other boy.

Alison Stewart: The movie is set in an indian boarding school in the surrounding neighborhood. Can you tell us a little more about the location, Shuchi?

Shuchi Talati: The film is set in the Himalayan foothills in a town called Mussoorie. It's funny, there are a few mountain towns in India which have this unusually high concentration of boarding schools. This particular town, I would say it probably has 100 boarding schools.

Alison Stewart: Really?

Shuchi Talati: Yes, so it was natural for me to set the film there. 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. That location really allowed me to express her kind of her emotional state.

Alison Stewart: 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.

Shuchi Talati: If you know, you know. I would say, God, so many things. The teachers were both their sort of half parental figures, but half also, like, policing you. You develop these very complicated relationships with them, where you care about them, you want them to approve of you. 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.

Alison Stewart: Preeti, did you have any experiences that you could pull on from your own time in school?

Preeti Panigrahi: Of course. I was Mira in my high school, apart from the boyfriend and 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. 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. I always was just fearful of getting caught. Also because my mom was in the school, so I could not have at all.

Just imagine Anila being right next to you all the time when in school, you're experimenting all this. I could not have gone on with that experimentation. It was really refreshing to get into Mira's shoes and 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 Shuchi 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 kissing a boy back then.

Alison Stewart: Shuchi, you found Preeti in an open casting call.

Shuchi Talati: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What was that audition process like?

Shuchi Talati: Oh, my God, it was so long. We started casting months before we had to shoot because we all knew this film lives or dies by its performances. We were working with this amazing, very senior casting director. His name is Dilip Shankar. He cast a bunch of Mira Nair's films. I think months in, we hadn't found our Mira. Then Preeti's audition came in and he had a little spreadsheet where he would put in auditions that he liked. I saw it and I was immediately-- I immediately called him. I was like, "Did you see this new girl?" He was like, "I just didn't want to 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. A lot of the girls who were auditioning kept playing it very coy, batting their eyelids, being kind of shy. I just didn't feel it was Mira. The direction I would always give them was, you are the head prefect. Preeti having been head prefect, played it just right where she liked this boy, but she had a dignity about her. She wasn't going to bat her eyelid. She had a strength. That strength for Mira was essential.

I can't tell you, we were so delighted when we saw her.

Alison Stewart: Preeti, do you remember making that tape? What was on your mind when you were making that tape?

Preeti Panigrahi: I think just 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. I'm just going to hold that face and I'm going to hold that strength in me and not give in so quickly. Also, I think another interesting audition that we did was the one where Anila and Mira have like, a dance-off. That was really fun to shoot. 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."

We both were really excited to film that. At that time I had no idea what the scene meant and where Shuchi was leading that to. I was really curious. It was a very, very interesting audition to do as an actor to be curious about what the film is all about.

Alison Stewart: Shuchi, there's a moment in the film when Mira makes a tape for Sri, but he says he couldn't listen to it because he didn't have his Walkman. What era does this take place in?

Shuchi Talati: It's in the late '90s, and you won't not enjoy the film if you don't get it. For me, it's a very special time because, one, I was a teenager then, and there's some nostalgia. There's about 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. I wanted to do that. Second, the '90s were actually a very important and interesting time in India. 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 opened up.

You could get Western pop culture, you could get a pair of Levi's, you could buy McDonald's burger. For teenagers, then, that became a way for us to express rebellion. Get a pair of jeans, wear a mini skirt. 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 has access to. It was also a way to set Anila aside, apart from all the other moms and teachers.

Alison Stewart: 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?

Preeti Panigrahi: Since the very beginning of even since I got the script, Dilip Shankar told me that there'll be intimacy involved, but he also gave me this confidence that it's Shuchi who's doing it. Go ahead, see her work. 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. 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.

I was so, so surprised and so taken aback by how special the set felt every time we went in for an intimate scene, immediately the boom mics would go to the women-- The clapboard would go to a woman. 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. It was a very, very special moment, and I had no trouble putting my pants down in scenes like that.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is Girls Will Be Girls. It opens tomorrow at Film Forum. New York magazine called it the best film at this year's Sundance. My guests have been Preeti Panigrahi and Shuchi Talati. Talati, Taleta

Shuchi Talati: Talati.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Thank you for being in studio. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Preeti.

Shuchi Talati: Thank you. Alison.

Preeti Panigrahi: Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

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