Early in Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, the film’s protagonist, a precocious high-school senior named Mira (Preeti Panigrahi), stands in front of a mirror, combing her hair and rubbing lotion, when a soft, sensuous pop song comes on the radio. Slowly, she begins to dance to the music. As Mira gets carried away by her moves, her mother Anila (Kani Kusruti) enters the room, and the girl stops — one of those quiet “gotcha” moments that many of us might remember from our youths. But then, Mom herself starts to sway to the music, beckoning her daughter into a parent-child communion. Mira makes a half-hearted attempt to join in before stepping away; it’s too awkward, too weird. She’s a teenager, after all, and which teenager would be caught dead dancing with their own mother? Anila’s face drops, as the euphoria of bonding dissipates. The loveliness of the moment is enhanced by its mystery. Did mother and daughter dance together when the girl was younger? Is Anila’s gray look a winsome recognition that her child is growing up — or is it a more self-centered one, reflecting a fear that she herself isn’t so young anymore?

This is the kind of vibrant ambiguity that sometimes seems to come effortlessly to Girls Will Be Girls, a subtly powerful Indian drama that was probably the best picture I saw at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. (It opens in New York today and will expand nationally in the weeks to come.) The movie tells what could be a simple coming-of-age story, but it’s been written and directed and acted with such feeling, such observation, that every moment pulses with life. Mira is the top student at her elite school near the Himalayas, and she’s been named head prefect for the year, which is sort of like a student-council president with a lot more power and responsibilities (not to mention more spite directed at her from the other kids). She’s charmed by the new boy at school, a cheerful and handsome lad named Srinivas (Kesav Binoy Kiron) who just moved from Hong Kong. Their first real exchange occurs when he asks her to put up a flyer for his astronomy club, as their fingers dance around each other while tacking a piece of paper on the school bulletin board. Among other things, Girls Will Be Girls captures the ways that young love can turn the most mundane interaction into something intimate and indelible.

Yes, it might be puppy love, but like many a teenager before her, Mira suspects this might be “big-dog love.” Pleasant and courteous, Sri says and does all the right things. He stays in a dormitory, while Mira lives nearby, so he starts coming over with Mom’s gleefully conspiratorial help. Anila, who graduated from this school years earlier and still imagines herself as not too far removed from girlhood, is also charmed by this young man. First, she sees in the boy a chance to bond further with her daughter: With Sri around, mom and daughter even dance together, finally. But Mira also begins to suspect that her mother is showing more interest in Sri than appropriate. It’s the kind of plot turn that could make for sleazy melodrama — perhaps something from the paperback romances Anila likes to read — but Talati lets the uncertainty over these people’s intentions hang in the air, maybe because they themselves probably aren’t sure what they’re doing.

Mira is new to this girlfriend-boyfriend stuff, and Sri pretends to be, too — though we can tell early on that he has more experience than he lets on, especially when he talks about a relationship he had for over a year in Hong Kong. Mira has for so long been such a good and proper student; she clearly relishes how their relationship allows her to feel like she’s quietly rebelling against the school’s strict ways. But her occasional haughtiness as a student extends to her personal life as well. Sri’s well-spoken respectfulness lets Mira imagine that their love is different than the other kids’ — certainly a step above the burgeoning romance between her best friend Priya (Kajol Chugh) and one of her boorish classmates, Vikrant (Aman Desai).

Talati makes her feature-directing debut here, and she ably juggles all this dicey subject matter, avoiding both common coming-of-age clichés and the pitfalls of cheap melodrama. There’s a delectable, pitch-perfect hesitation to the performances. Everybody seems to be treading on eggshells, because they’re all navigating feelings they’re unsure of in a setting that doesn’t allow for uncertainty, fantasy, pleasure — or even really pain. Girls Will Be Girls is a modest work, but like some of the greatest films, it comes to vivid life before our eyes.

Vikrant Massey as Prem in ‘Sector 36’
| Photo Credit: Netflix

This is a gloomy week to be watching Hindi movies. The quality of the individual films may vary, but their subject matters are uniformly bleak. Out in cinemas is The Buckingham Murders, about the disappearance of a young boy in a UK town. Closer home, in Sector 36, Vikrant Massey is Prem, a strange name for the psychopathic butcher he plays. Beyond these two titles and the everyday onslaught of horrifying news, your only oasis of hope is Berlin, a moody, claustrophobic spy thriller set in the 90s. Car chases and explosions are scant, but at least no minors, as far as I can tell, are sadistically slaughtered in Atul Sabharwal’s film.

While it is not made explicit, Sector 36, directed by debutant Aditya Nimbalkar and written by Bodhayan Roychaudhury, takes inspiration from the 2006 Noida serial murders, famously known as the Nithari killings. Heavily sensationalised at the time, the case squirmed with accusations of organ trafficking, cannibalism and necrophilia. The two accused — a wealthy businessman and his domestic help — were put on death row for rape and murder, but, in 2023, the Allahabad High Court acquitted them, citing a lack of sound evidence and slating the investigating agencies for a shoddy probe.

It’s perhaps the contentious nature of the story that compelled Netflix to lend it a fictional slant. Several children and young women have been disappearing from Rajiv Colony, a vast, populous slum of migrants in Delhi. Since the victims hail from impoverished backgrounds, the cops are accustomed to turning a blind eye, including Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal), a Newton-worshipping sub-inspector who bows to the “system”. However, when his own daughter, Vedu, is nearly abducted by Prem (in a Ravana mask), Ram springs into action. His change of heart feels sudden and convenient — this, though, might be the point, underlining an Indian attitude to take command when calamity brushes close.

At once vague, violent and exploitative, Sector 36 offers no convincing analysis of the murders. The makers, it seems, parsed every strand of an incredibly murky investigation, then agreed to keep all possibilities open. Their reading of urban inequality and the plight of destitute children is to basically shrug and say, ‘Nobody cares’. Fatally for a crime thriller, this is a film of non-specifics. The scenes featuring Prem, alone in a large house, are an assortment of serial killer cliché. His slimy employer, Bassi, played by Akash Khurana, is a perverse transport baron who shuffles around in monogrammed housecoats. Weaker still are the digs at Delhi’s corrupt police apparatus: IPS, one character jokes, now stands for ‘In Politician’s Service’.

Saurabh Goswami was co-cinematographer on Pataal Lok (2021), which explains the slick dark look and mythology-fuelled imagery. ‘Man Kyun Behka’ wafts from old cassette players, a better sonic choice than the plinks and plonks of the background score. The mid-2000s are lightly conjured: A version of Kaun Banega Crorepati holds the nation in thrall, and, in one shot, we catch sight of a Nokia 6600, the precursor to an iPhone for most Indians back then.

There are flickers of campiness in Massey’s performance — he peers through the grills of a giant gate, baiting and taunting his enemy — that are diminished by Nimbalkar’s over-sincere telling. In one pivotal scene, Prem records his confession before Ram, in gratuitous detail, yet the exchange lacks the unsettling wickedness of Nawazuddin Siddiqui toying with Vicky Kaushal in Raman Raghav 2.0. A boring Deepak Dobriyal performance is a rarity, so in one sense, and in one sense only, Sector 36 is an event. It’s somewhat true-crime, and a lot of false notes.

Sector 36 is currently streaming on Netflix

In “How to Die Alone,” creator-star Natasha Rothwell (“Insecure,” “Saturday Night Live”) plays Melissa, or Mel, described by Hulu, where it premieres Friday, as “a broke, fat, Black JFK airport employee who’s never been in love and forgotten how to dream.”

Her size doesn’t really enter into it — there’s no indication that she’s heavy because she’s unhappy or unhappy because she’s heavy — but she does seem to be stuck in place, 35 and with no love life and no prospects beyond driving passengers around JFK in one of those motorized carts. She hasn’t moved on since ending a relationship two years earlier with her handsome boss, Alex (Jocko Sims), “the only man that ever got me,” a decision she now regrets.

This is a self-realization story hung on a romantic comedy — to begin with, it takes place in an airport, the most rom-commy of all rom-com settings. What’s more, Alex is about to get married, and Mel has been invited to the Hawaii-set wedding, likely in the knowledge that she won’t attend, as she can’t afford the ticket and, metaphorically significant, is afraid to fly. That it doesn’t necessarily go where that set-up suggests is to Rothwell’s credit.

The show, which has something of the air of an extended indie film, is a spectrum of styles, from slapstick to straight drama, with person-on-the-street interviews introducing each episode. It can be sentimental to the point of corn, though it is smart enough to undercut the corn with a subsequent dose of chaos. Stylistic eruptions interrupt the production — video effects, dancing, the world freezing in place around Mel, an onscreen meter to illustrate Mel’s Percocet wearing off. Occasions are found for Rothwell to sing, which she does very prettily.

Mel is living on a series of maxed-out credit cards, though not, one would say, living high. Abandoned on her birthday by her friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora), whose father is “president” of the airport and whose only occupation seems to be distracting Mel from her work, she goes shopping at an Ikea parody called Ümlaüt (on which the designers have lavished some loving care). When furniture she’s just assembled unsurprisingly falls over on her, causing her to choke on some takeout crab rangoon (“real crab, because I paid extra for it on my birthday”) she “dies” for three minutes and returns to consciousness in a hospital room, with comedy doctors at her feet and elderly Elise (Jackie Richardson) in the next bed. Elise, a quasi-magical wise woman, will deliver the sermonette that will haunt and drive Mel through the season.

“There are three kinds of death,” Elise says. “Physical death, we all know and write poems about; then there’s the kind when people stop caring about you; and the worst kind is when you stop caring for yourself.”

“I used to be just like you,” she tells Mel, whom she has somehow analyzed in a snap, “holding my tongue, scared of everything. Now, when my life flashes before my eyes, at least I’ll see something.” And, advising Mel to go out and do what scares her, she expires.

When the hospital mistakenly sends Mel home with Elise’s possessions, she visits the woman’s empty, neat, book-filled apartment and comes away with some photographs, a credit credit card and a dog. These will prove important.

After a piece of furniture topples on her, Melissa (Natasha Rothwell) has a near-death experience that makes her reevaluate her life.

(Ian Watson / Hulu )

Though Alex is continually on her mind — and there are some nicely written scenes between Mel and Alex, whose friendliness you are free, like Mel, to interpret as flirtatious — the romantic thread of the story is its least vital aspect; even Mel’s journey to self-acceptance runs along a predictable, if ultimately affecting, course. But what keeps “How to Die Alone” aloft are its side stories and well-realized secondary characters.

These include Mel’s married brother Brian (the great Bashir Salahuddin, of “South Side” and his own “Sherman’s Showcase”); Allie (Jaylee Hamidi), the bartender who befriends Mel after she gets out of the hospital and to whom she complains of not being seen and wanting to be seen; and especially the ground crew with whom she grabs an occasional cigarette — Shaun (Arkie Kandola) and Deshawn (Christopher Powell), the show’s Shakespearean clowns, droll alt-comedy legend H. Jon Benjamin as a sort of mystic guru of flight; and Terrance (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), its other handsome man, who does actually see Mel, though she does not see him seeing her.

Obviously, Mel is her own worst enemy — that’s the point — and apart from a critical mother (“Saturday Night Live” vet Ellen Cleghorne) and a jealous coworker (Michelle McLeod), almost her only enemies. Though she feels friendless, she has both a dedicated group of friends who will go out of their way for her and an ability to talk to strangers (in Spanish and ASL too). That, to be sure, is no cure for depression, but “How to Die Alone,” though certainly not free from conflict, is a genial series, full of people being sweet. It’s more inspirational than not.