Bad Girl movie review: Coming-of-age Tamil film smashes patriarchy without bringing a hammer to it

Varsha Bharath’s debut feature, which runs nearly two hours, is not radically new in the way it creates a protagonist whose flaws, just like the sprinkle of her teenage acne, are in your face. That Ramya has trouble conforming is clear from the time we meet her, and it only grows as she lurches into her thirties: her grandmother’s early attempts at keeping her out of the kitchen when she is on her period are thwarted; her mother (Shanthipriya), a teacher at the school Ramya attends, is horrified when she hears of her ‘antics’ with a boy at a school excursion, her patent disinterest in studies is never hidden, her best friend Selvi (Saranya Ravichandran) despairs of her being sensible about her romantic entanglements..

The list goes on. And so does the film, which at one point feels like a litany of woes, from our bad girl’s perspective. The boy (Hridu Haroon) she first loses her heart to is whisked off. The college-mate (Shashank Bomireddipalli) she is madly enamoured with, turns out to be a skunk. And yet another fellow (Teejay Arunsalam) is yet another incomplete story.

There are times when you feel it’s all very one-sided, but then that’s because that’s exactly what the director, who has also written the film, intends — to show it from the young woman’s lens. And that’s perfectly fine. Let’s get more stories of young women who feel like they are messy, hurting, real, not painted mannequins dreamt up in mainstream assembly lines. Because even in 2025, we still don’t have enough films whose lead protagonists are young women who want to know who they are, and who are allowed to emerge stronger, and perhaps, happier.

Parts of it reminded me of Shuchi Talati’s ‘Girls Will Be Girls’, which is also about a girl who breaks rules: just like Preeti Panigrahi’s Mira in ‘GWBG’, Anjali Sivaraman’s Ramya is curious about her sexuality, and wants to explore what touch feels like, all the while raging against the conservative elements which think boys sowing their wild oats is par for the course, but girls doing the same only bring ‘shame’ upon themselves, and their family. Both the girls’ mothers, starting off at near cross-purposes, also become allies, and in the process, learn something about themselves: there really is no age to coming-of-age, and just like Kani Kusruti who was lovely in GWBG, so is Shanthipriya in this one, adding generational layers and texture.

In one impactful scene, both Ramya and her mother end up sitting side by side, both victims of external judgement-and-disapproval: the latter because she dared bring a ‘girl child’ into the world, and the former for doing what her heart desires.

Watch Bad Girl movie trailer here:

The performances are all-round terrific, with Shanthipriya as a stand-out. What I really liked is how Bharath makes no excuses for Ramya’s behavior: there’s no past trauma that makes her behave the way she does; she isn’t ‘acting out’, she is just being. Patriarchy is being smashed, but again, the director doesn’t bring a hammer to it; it flows from the characters’ lives and how they’ve lived it up until then.

The film starts off in the recent past — there’s mention of Orkut, and the computer in Ramya’s house is a bulky desktop — and proceeds to a pimple-less, more-or-less clear-complexioned present, which is still as complex. What I also liked is that the film offers no neat solutions; just a girl and her cats in a room she can call her own.

Bad Girl movie cast: Anjali Sivaraman, Shanthipriya, Saranya Ravichandran, Hridhu Haroon, Sashank Bomireddipalli, Teejay Arunasalam
Bad Girl movie director: Varsha Bharath
Bad Girl movie rating: 3 stars

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