The Girlfriend Review

What if Arjun Reddy was retold from Preethi's perspective? What if instead of following the aggressive outbursts of a possessive boyfriend, we could watch the quiet struggles of his modest girlfriend? Would we still sympathize with the self-destructive, love-mad archetype?

No doubt, these are the kinds of questions writer-director Rahul Ravindran set out to answer in his thoughtful, if flawed, exploration of the girlfriend psyche. Rashmika Mandanna plays Bhooma, 'The Girlfriend', who gets swept up by the college hotshot Vikram (Dheekshith Shetty). From the get-go, their coupling feels doomed. He is a forceful personality and the walking definition of a male chauvinist - too controlling, too oblivious to his own flaws. Inside their toxic relationship, Bhooma loses her voice, and then her own identity, turning from a studious, sweet-natured girl into an anxious, full-time girlfriend.

It is hard not to view The Girlfriend as a reaction to Arjun Reddy and its imitators - to the recent slate of romance dramas that elevate perverse ideas of love and masculinity and do so unapologetically. The camera is trained, for the most part, not on Vikram's aggression but on Bhooma's reaction. It is not quite as entertaining as Arjun Reddy's shenanigans, but in being forced to sit with Bhooma's inner turmoil and fears, we give space to the oft-ignored female character of such love stories.

We are with Bhooma witnessing her body's resistance when Vikram half-forces a kiss on her; with her the following morning when she stares into the mirror and contends with it. We are with her when she uncomfortably accepts her fate as Vikram's girlfriend, unable to navigate herself out of his love-bombing. And also in her darkened bedroom as she curls into a fetal position after a confrontation between her boyfriend and her father (Rao Ramesh), who is no less controlling and manipulative.

However, while the film is subversive to the prevailing trends of romance dramas, it is far from a nuanced or bipartisan take on relationships. It dulls us with its single-mindedness. For an improbably long stretch, Bhooma stumbles through the relationship, so visibly miserable that further elaboration feels redundant. Yet the film keeps rehashing her plight. Worse are the trite visual metaphors, as when the walls close in to depict Bhooma's suffocation.

The supporting characters exist only to demystify some aspect of Bhooma's and Vikram's psyches. Bhooma's father's manipulative nature explains how she got to be so unassertive and people-pleasing. Vikram's narcissistic love is also explained through glimpses of his mother, an impossibly meek lady who does her son's bidding. Rohini who plays the mother feels terribly miscast.

In much the same way that Sandeep Reddy Vanga uses his films to propagate his hypermasculine philosophy, The Girlfriend is Rahul Ravindran's own pulpit. He even casts himself as the film's moral conscience, playing the Dean of the Literature School in which Bhooma is studying, acting as her mentor doling out sage advice about her situation. And then there is the overt poeticism of casting Rashmika, the real-life girlfriend of Vijay Deverakonda, the actor who famously played Arjun Reddy.

Rashmika and Dheekshith, burdened with caricatured roles, never quite transcend them. Even with her hunched posture and downcast eyes, Rashmika's meekness feels unconvincing; she's more compelling in her moments of anger and catharsis. Dheekshith plays an easy-to-hate boyfriend with no redeeming qualities.

The real test of Rahul's ideas comes in the more interesting second half: how does a girl like Bhooma climb out of the hole and reclaim her voice? The climax, clever and cathartic, brings the film's feminist ideas to fruition - and might alone be worth watching for.