The Girlfriend - A Soft Grief, A Quiet Freedom

Rashmika Mandanna's "The Girlfriend" was one of those decisions that came purely from instinct. And sometimes, instinct takes you to the most unexpected experiences. I wanted to spend time with myself, sit in a theatre alone, and watch something soft and romantic, something that would gently hold my emotions..I walked in with that expectation.

Before I share what stayed with me, I need to acknowledge something. Rahul Ravindran's writing is rare. I genuinely love it when men write women with sensitivity, not as plot devices or stepping stones for a hero's journey, but as individuals with logic, emotional depth, opinions and agency. He doesn't glamorise struggle, and he doesn't infantilise pain. Instead, he discusses the most realistic, most logical, most lived-in emotional battles women face. The kind of battles that society often dismisses as "overreacting". His writing respects women.

And that respect shows in the very first scene. 

Bhooma(Rashmika) walks up the steps, dragging her luggage on her own, not asking for help or expecting someone to notice her struggle. When a stranger approached and offered help, she hesitated. It's that tiny pause.. that confusion we all carry "Should I let someone help me? Can I allow myself to receive?" And when the person simply moves closer and lends a hand without forcing it, she responds with a small, grateful smile.

No dialogue.. No background score.. just a moment that lets you feel her. In those few silent seconds, her character was introduced, not through words, but through emotion. And just like that.. I was invested.

As the story unfolded, something beautiful happened. I started travelling with her. I understood her silences, her hesitation, her longing to be understood without having to explain herself. I could sense what she would do next, almost finishing her emotional sentences in my mind.

The film never pointed fingers or painted someone as the "villain". It didn't force us to take sides. Instead, it gently revealed why people become who they are. It opened conversations around parenting, emotional conditioning, and the cultural loopholes that shape our insecurities, especially in relationships. It was honest without being preachy, empathetic without being dramatic.

In recent years, I've seen films where women are often reduced to one-dimensional labels. Movies like Baby pushed narratives where the woman becomes the reason for a man's downfall, and audiences passionately discussed the hero's pain while overlooking the emotional silence of the woman. Even with Arjun Reddy, the conversations glorified his rage far more than they empathised with Preethi. 

"The Girlfriend" felt like the other side of that coin. Here, a woman isn't a plot device or a trigger. She is a whole person with her own opinions, choices, dreams and internal battles. Not someone to be interpreted through a man's emotional lens, but someone with her own.

Another layer that really struck me was how Bhooma is almost nudged into the relationship with Vikram, not out of love, but out of expectation. Her college friends admire her, not for who she is, but for who she is "managed" to date, a good-looking man. The way they cheer her on, almost like she's won a prize, shows how society conditions women to see relationships as achievements. Bhooma doesn't get the time or space to ask herself what she wants; she simply flows with the approval. That's the most dangerous part, when the world makes decisions that feel like our own. This is how we end up in situations we were never really ready for.

There are two visual metaphors in the film that stayed with me for a long time. The first is a mirror shot. The emotional weight of this mirror shot is profound. In fact, the framing makes it appear that Bhooma is looking at herself alongside the older woman, almost like a preview of what she might become. The use of distance, framing, and reflection transforms a simple conversation into a moment of profound introspective drama. It allows us to see the usually quiet, internal process of Bhooma waking up to her reality. Through the mirror's frame, we witness her fear, her heartbreak, and the flicker of determination as she grasps who she does not want to become.

The second happens before the interval. Bhooma enters a washroom, just to breathe for a moment. Suddenly, the walls start closing in, visually suffocating her panic attack. No dramatic music, just raw emotion. I should say that I felt that scene in my bones.

And then there is Rohini garu's character. She barely has a single dialogue, yet she speaks volumes through her silences. The way she talks to herself while working in the kitchen, when no one is watching, shows how much she has buried within her, the dreams, opinions, and unexpressed emotions. Her entire life has become about staying in the background, almost invisible in her own home. What broke me was her son casually saying, "My father won't spare her if she steps out of the kitchen when guests are around", and he laughs. 

And in that tiny moment, the film shows the normalisation of emotional suppression across generations.

Another striking presence in the film is Durga, played by Anu Emmanuel, a woman who enters like fire. She becomes a mirror to the male protagonist. She knows him, his patterns, how he views the women in his life, how his love revolves around control and ego. She exposes his blindness with clarity. But he never understands. Durga is a character who has been used to reveal the male protagonist to the audience.

I can't stop thinking about how beautifully the film is built. So many storytellers want to tell a story, but I believe cinema should let us feel it. The Girlfriend trusts the audience. It doesn't judge any character. Instead, it lets us sit with them and understand how they became who they are, shaped by parenting, loss, expectations, and emotional voids. We empathize with everyone because all of them are trapped inside emotional patterns they never questioned. 

It shows how loss softens some people and hardens others. The film also holds a mirror to something we normalize far too often - Possessiveness. We romanticise it. We call it care. But it doesn't come from love. It comes from insecurity. 

What made "The Girlfriend" special to me wasn't that Bhooma is shown as a victim. It's that she chooses herself consciously, courageously. Her journey isn't about escaping, but about growing. 

I think I will stop here. Not because I have said everything, but because I could keep writing forever. It's been a long time since a film made my thoughts flow so effortlessly. The Girlfriend felt like a psychological horror, not in genre, but in how deeply it entered my mind. Some scenes suffocate you, some trigger old panic, some hit places you didn't know still hurt. 

But when the screen fades to black and the credits begin to roll.. something shifts. You walk out feeling lighter, as if someone finally understood the pain you never found words for. The misunderstanding, the emotional exhaustion, the loneliness of being unheard. 

Maybe that's what this film is, a THERAPY.