At about 50 minutes, this is a featurette that shows young love amidst religious intolerance. Its strength lies in its quiet conviction. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
Jeevan (Mayur Gowda) loves Ameena (Sucharitha). They’ve known each other from when they were children, and the fact that he is Hindu and she is Muslim does not seem to be an issue. At least, Ameena doesn’t seem to think it is an issue. She tells Jeevan that it is 2024. Who cares about Hindu-Muslim, etc.? She is “liberated” in a good way. It’s not that she smokes and has sex with Jeevan. That’s just surface-level behaviour. Ameena comes across as liberated because she genuinely does not seem to care about religion or “what will society say?” or any of those things. Director Sarthak Hegde co-wrote Green Girl with Triko and Manish Kumar. They single out Ameena. We don’t see her family. We don’t see her other friends, if she has any. We only see her in relation to Jeevan. She is “liberated” from all other ties except love: her love for Jeevan.
Jeevan, on the other hand, is tied to his surroundings in deeper ways. At a friend’s urging, he has joined a saffron outfit, whose members are convinced that Muslims are converting people from other religions in the name of love. They believe in the concept of “Akhand Bharat”, an undivided India that extends from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. They believe that the cow is a mother-figure. In passing, we hear about Jeevan’s father, who is proud of his affiliation with this outfit. When Jeevan kisses Ameena, we hear the ringing of temple bells. At every point, Jeevan is tied to his religion and society in a way that Ameena isn’t to hers. And so he is afraid. He keeps dreaming that he’s been killed. He is not a coward, exactly. He does ask Ameena to come to the temple festival, but he also keeps thinking about what this relationship could do to him, to them.
Green Girl runs 50-odd minutes (including end credits), and it is a featurette version of the traditional Hindu-Muslim – or, saffron and green – love story. America becomes the symbol of all that is free and all that is possible without societal interference, and the way Jeevan and Ameena reach this destination is thoughtfully, sensitively, and poignantly narrated. (A bottle of Coke, that ultimate “Americanism”, plays a role in the proceedings.) There is violence and tragedy, but they do not play out in the usual ways. On the one hand, we have the wonderfully naturalistic lead performances and Abhinay Pandit’s unflashy docu-style cinematography. On the other hand, Green Girl flirts with surrealism, aided immensely by Surya Srini and Daniel Marin’s electronic music. This twofold treatment works beautifully. The “story” may be old, but this featurette is a terrific example of the maxim that it’s not about what you say but how you say it.
