What Does The Key Mean?

In Girls Will Be Girls, every scene feels like an introspective journey into our collective high school experience. Sure, we’re not all Mira, but we’ve all had at least a sliver of Mira’s experiences as a student in school with a drive to do better for yourself. More importantly, the film focuses on the central mother-daughter relationship and how it changes over time when there’s a new number in the equation, a boy. Mira is a 16-year-old girl who seems to have it all. She’s intelligent, she’s the first female head prefect at her boarding school, and she’s quite popular, well, at least with her teachers, but Mira’s soon going to experience something new, something she believes she’s never felt before: “love.” With this, her life changes drastically, but why? And what happens between Mira and Sri? Let’s find out in the detailed summary and explanation of Girls Will Be Girls.

Spoiler Alert

What Happens Between Sri And Mira? 

Sri is the most charming boy you’ll ever meet. He might not be super intelligent, but he’s definitely smart and knows exactly how to get what he wants out of anyone. He calls this their “key,” but we’ll get to that a bit later. Mira isn’t a naive girl; she’s certainly cautious, but she’s also eager to try new things. She’s keen on having experiences and isn’t afraid to step out of her bubble to do so. Sri charms his way into Mira’s life like a snail. It’s slow, but suddenly he’s right there, and she’s completely taken by him. You can’t really say he’s a bad influence on her, but he does push her to do things she would otherwise never do. Before you know it, Mira’s head over heels for Sri. One night, Mira’s mum picks up the phone and realizes a boy wants to talk to Mira. Instead of stopping her from seeing the guy, she tries to get her daughter to trust her and decides there’s no other way than to meet him herself. 

We already know Sri’s quite the charmer, so it’s no surprise when he immediately gets Mira’s mom to like him so that they can hang out more, you know, under the pretense of studying together. Mira’s relationship with her mom is typically adolescent. It’s neither super sweet nor is it completely unhinged. There are moments of quiet, and then there’s rage. Mira wants to be close to her mother, but she’s also afraid of her judgment. While on the surface it seems this movie is about Mira and Sri’s relationship, it’s in fact about Mira’s relationship with herself, but more importantly about how that’s affected by her relationship with her mother. 

Soon Sri’s visits become more common, and Mira’s boundaries get pushed further. At the same time, her mother starts to like Sri too and is happy to cook for him and invite him over because the poor guy doesn’t have a great relationship with his parents. Mira’s mum buys her a cute-looking skort, which she’s really eager to wear when Sri’s around. I think it is in the moment that Mira, Sri, and her mum dance together that the entire atmosphere of the film changes. In this moment, Mira starts to realize that her mum’s a woman such as herself and may have some desires too. I guess she starts to see her as a competitor rather than a figure who can help her tell right from wrong. She starts to lose respect for her because of that. It’s not that Mira hates her mother; neither does she think she’s in love with Sri; she just feels a pang inside, a hunch, so to speak, that something isn’t right in this dynamic. 

Maybe this is what pushes her to challenge or betray her mother’s trust. While up until this point, Mira’s been exploring her sexuality, she decides to explore with Sri after this dancing situation. She lies to her friend and her parents to get away with Sri and do the deed. But, in the moment they’re getting handsy with each other, she realizes he’s way more experienced than her. There’s nothing worse than making a smart girl feel stupid. At the same time, her mom sees what’s going on and essentially starts “parenting” Mira about Sri. Yes, Mira’s mum has also experienced the same things she’s going through. She was also once a teenager with feelings, but she also knows when to tell Mira to back away. Unfortunately, Mira’s too busy thinking her mom doesn’t care about her feelings to factor in these things. When Mira notices that Sri and her mother are way too close, she decides it’s time for rebellion and tells Sri that she wants to go the whole mile. Sri then stays over on his birthday and ends up sleeping in the same room as Mira’s mom because she wants to make sure there’s no funny business under her watch; Mira gets mad. What’s worse is that they have an exam, and he doesn’t wake up even though he’d asked her to wake him up, so she feels betrayed by both people. Still, Sri wins Mira over again, and they end up doing the deed, but as you can imagine, it doesn’t leave Mira as happy as she imagined it would. 

What Happens With Hardik And The Boys? 

On the other hand, Mira’s asked out by another boy in school, and she rejects him because she isn’t interested. The boy feels it’s an insult, and he takes it upon himself to make Mira feel as “miserable” as he was in that tiny moment she rejected him. Of course, this is not all; he and some other boys even take pictures of girls up their skirts in school, and Mira gets them suspended instead of agreeing to the sexist notion that it’s the skirts that need to be long and not the boys better behaved. On teacher’s day, Mira has to act as principal, and none of the teachers are around. Hardik and his friends try to harass her. They run after her, and she ends up hiding away in a room by herself and calling her mom. 

When her mum shows up, the teacher starts to talk about Sri and how the boys have told her that he and Mira have been in a relationship and that he stays over at theirs often. Mira’s mum immediately sides with her and tells the teacher that she decides who comes inside her house. Mira’s mum is also an alumnus of this school and probably knows how humiliating it is to have teachers believe random boys over her own word. They’re so hypocritical because they want Mira to be the top student and never get distracted, but they will believe the boys who have never done well. Mira’s mum gives a fitting reply to the teacher and makes her realize there’s nothing to feel humiliated about. Respect as a young girl is hard to come by, but Mira’s mum has nothing but love and respect for her. 

What Does The Key Mean? 

In Girls Will Be Girls’s ending, Mira realizes that it’s her mum who loves her most dearly, not Sri. Her eyes are opened when they discuss her mom’s “key.” According to Sri, everybody has a key, and Mira’s mum’s is attention. If he pays more attention to her, he’ll get to spend more time with Mira. All he’s doing is using Mira’s mom, and for what? Finally, Mira’s realized that her mum deserves respect, not to be treated as some pushover who gets used by teenagers to sneak around. If Sri is using her mum’s key, he’s likely doing the same thing to her and will never really care about them. The movie ends with the most beautiful scene between mother and daughter where they reverse roles for a second. Mira willingly gives her mom a head massage and slowly, in the silence, begins to cry. She is, of course, feeling a plethora of emotions here. One is the sadness of trusting Sri and then realizing he was no good to her. The second is anger for trusting him, and the third is nearly rejecting her mom and not realizing they’re two sides of the same coin. These final moments are so profound you can’t help but cry with Mira about all the times you’ve felt distant from your mom. It’s a moment in which she reminds herself that her mum’s human too and deserves all the love in the world. 

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