An evocative portrait of love’s fragility and the quiet cruelty of possession, anchored by Rashmika Mandanna’s hauntingly intimate performance.

Love, as The Girlfriend quietly reminds us, is rarely gentle. It begins as tenderness — soft, hopeful, unguarded — and then, without warning, mutates into something heavier, almost suffocating. Rahul Ravindran’s film attempts to trace this transformation with a kind of wounded empathy, crafting not so much a love story as a study of emotional unravelling. What emerges is an uneven yet affecting psychological portrait — one rescued, and in many ways transcended, by Rashmika Mandanna’s luminous central performance.

Rashmika plays a woman caught in the delicate web between affection and annihilation — where the lines blur between being loved and being consumed. Her portrayal is both vulnerable and unsettling, as if she’s constantly negotiating with her own reflection. There are moments when her silence feels louder than dialogue, when a flicker in her gaze says more than an entire monologue could. It’s a performance rooted in restraint, yet it vibrates with suppressed feeling — the kind that lingers long after the scene fades.

Ravindran’s direction carries an almost therapeutic sensitivity. He is not interested in melodrama but in the quiet implosions that occur within the psyche when intimacy becomes claustrophobic. His camera doesn’t chase spectacle — it observes. The framing lingers, the cuts hesitate, and the silences stretch just long enough to make the viewer uncomfortable. It’s in these silences that The Girlfriend is at its most powerful — and also, paradoxically, its most fragile.

For while the film’s thematic core is rich — obsession, self-identity, emotional consent — its storytelling wavers. The script falters between introspection and indulgence, occasionally mistaking atmosphere for depth. There are stretches where the narrative feels suspended, as though trapped in its own emotional fog. Yet, even in these lapses, Rashmika’s performance functions like a heartbeat — irregular, perhaps, but persistent.

Technically, the film is crafted with a muted elegance. The cinematography cloaks the characters in half-light, evoking the ambiguity of love itself — never entirely pure, never altogether dark. The background score hums like a subconscious whisper, often articulating what the script cannot. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy that seeps through every frame, reminding us that love, when stretched beyond empathy, can deform into control.

In the end, The Girlfriend is less a film and more an emotional condition — flawed, hesitant, but strangely truthful. It doesn’t offer catharsis or closure; instead, it leaves us with questions — about the self we lose in love, and the silence we inherit in its absence. Rashmika Mandanna stands at the centre of this ache, radiant yet bruised, proving that sometimes performance can succeed where storytelling stumbles.

Rating: ★★★☆☆