Director:Gurutej Shetty

Cast:Kiran Raj, Radhya R, Sameeksha, Ravi Shankar, Yash Shetty, Apurva

Published 14 September 2024, 04:31 IST

It would be completely understandable that Ron Howard, having directed more than two dozen genre-tripping films spanning six decades, would want to shake things up a bit by jumping into something outside his proven comfort zone.

And it would be equally logical that the vehicle to take him there would be a certifiably bizarre but true account of a 1920s German philosopher who sets up an experimental society with his lover/disciple on a remote island in the Galápagos, only to have it all implode when opportunists come and crash the party.

But despite all the intriguing possibilities of the concept and a game, international cast including Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl and Sydney Sweeney, Eden, handed its world premiere at Toronto, never finds its happy place. The prevailing overwrought tone lands more cartoonish than satirical, while a protracted running time accentuates the film’s deficiencies.

The movie certainly starts promisingly enough, efficiently setting up the life and times of Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Law). In 1929, he flees German society and its bourgeois values to create a new home on the remote island of Floreana, living off of limited natural resources with his survivalist partner, Dore Strauch (Kirby).

But the couple’s solitary existence is interrupted by the arrival of Heinz Wittmer (Brühl), a World War I vet with a younger new wife, Margaret (Sweeney), and a son, Harry (Jonathan Tittel). They have been following Ritter’s dispatches and hope the land’s virgin air might cure Harry’s tuberculosis, just as it appears to have kept Strauch’s multiple sclerosis under control.

Feeling less than hospitable, Ritter and Strauch glare at the newbies with their safari shorts and butterfly nets, figuring they won’t make it until the first rains.

But while the family prove surprisingly resilient, building a home for themselves and their soon-to-be newborn, their co-existence is freshly threatened by the entrance of the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (de Armas), accompanied by a pocket harem of young men, who intends to build the world’s most exclusive resort on the rocky terrain.

It soon becomes clear that the Baroness, with her long strand of pearls and a hard-to-place accent that sounds much like Anna Delvey’s, is a scheming instigator. She proceeds to pit the inhabitants against each other, leading to an inevitable descent into madness.

Despite an inspired setup that might suggest Werner Herzog’s Gilligan’s Island, Howard and screenwriter Noah Pink (Tetris) shipwreck the Queensland-shot vehicle in a mishmash of styles. Neither quite satire nor thriller nor murder mystery, the film cries out for a sharper attack.

It’s the kind of tale that would have been a natural fit for the likes of Mike White, whose acutely devious White Lotus sensibility would have been right at home here. But although Howard delivers some effective set pieces, notably a harrowing sequence in which Margaret must deliver her own baby, little about Eden feels consistent.

As a result, the performances are likewise hit and miss. De Armas does the best she can with her femme fatale role, even though she ultimately lacks the satirical chops of a more seasoned character actress to really hit it home.

Meanwhile, Law (so commanding in another TIFF offering, The Order) grows so tiresome as the smug, pontificating Dr. Ritter that by the time he eventually loses his mind, you can’t blame it for wanting to get away.

Only Sweeney manages to retain the viewer’s sympathy and her character’s sanity as the decent pillar of stability that is Margaret — who, as the end credits and archival footage reveal, would remain on the island until her death in 2000, and where her descendants host tourists at Wittmer Lodge to this day.

Now that premise sounds more like something in Howard’s wheelhouse.

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.