Varsha Bharath’s ‘Bad Girl’ is a spirited deep-dive into the head of a woman who is stifled by society

Anjali Sivaraman plays a girl who is “different” from those around her, and the film doesn’t judge her or feel sorry for her or even explain her. We are just asked to see her for who she is. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.

In Bad Girl, Anjali Sivaraman plays Ramya across a span of time. She is a middle-class Tamil Brahmin from a conservative family, and we see her evolve from a rebellious pimpled schoolgirl in the Orkut era to a rebellious working woman in her thirties, in the age of laptops. The title is a bit misleading. The film is not calling her a bad girl. The title lands on Ramya’s face with the force of a rubber stamp. It’s as though society has labeled her a bad girl. At one point, Ramya attends a family ritual, where a child is made to sit on its mother’s lap in front of the fire. The baby is crying with all the heat and smoke. Ramya takes it away to a cooler place and makes it comfortable and happy, and the crying stops. But the child is soon snatched away by a relative and re-deposited on the mother’s lap in front of the fire, and the crying begins again. This is not exactly a subtle metaphor, but it shows how we function. Rules matter. Tradition matters. The individual’s comfort and happiness can take a hike. And it begins right from when we are a baby.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/varsha-bharaths-bad-girl-is-a-spirited-deep-dive-into-the-head-of-a-woman-who-is-stifled-by-society/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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