There are films you watch and forget. Then there are films that make you sit quietly for a few minutes after the credits roll. The Girlfriend falls somewhere in between and that’s both its strength and its biggest problem.
Directed by Rahul Ravindran and released on November 7, 2025, this Telugu film had one job: tell an honest story about what it feels like to be slowly controlled by someone you love. It does that job sometimes beautifully, sometimes clumsily.
The Story
Bhooma Devi (Rashmika Mandanna) arrives in Hyderabad from a small town to pursue her MA in English Literature at NALSAR. She’s quiet, bookish, a little lost in a new city. Vikram (Dheekshith Shetty) is the confident engineering student who decides without really asking that she’s going to be his girlfriend.
At first it feels like a typical campus love story. Boy meets girl, girl resists, eventually falls. But Rahul Ravindran is not making that film. Slowly, almost without you noticing, Vikram’s “love” starts closing in around Bhooma. Who she talks to. Where she goes. What she wears. When she laughs too freely around other people.
The film is really about the moment a woman realizes that what she thought was love has actually been a cage and what she does next.
Rashmika Mandanna — This Is the Role She Needed
Let’s be direct: Rashmika carries this film entirely on her shoulders, and she doesn’t drop it.
What makes her performance work here is restraint. In the first half, Bhooma is deliberately underplayed small gestures, uncertain smiles, a habit of making herself smaller in rooms. You watch her slowly disappear inside the relationship. Then in the second half, particularly in the climax speech sequence, she lets everything out and it lands hard. Her eye work throughout is something else. No dramatic tears, just a kind of quiet exhaustion that feels completely real.
Cinema Express gave it 4/5 and called it a knockout performance. That’s not an exaggeration.
Dheekshith Shetty — Uncomfortably Good
The role of Vikram could have easily become a cartoon villain. Dheekshith Shetty doesn’t let that happen. His Vikram genuinely believes he loves Bhooma. He’s not cruel on purpose he’s just never been told that his version of love is suffocating. That’s what makes him so unsettling to watch. You’ve probably met someone like him.
The scene where Bhooma visits his home and meets his mother (Rohini, who does a lot with very little screen time) is the best-written moment in the film. Everything clicks into place in about thirty seconds of silence.
What Doesn’t Work
The first 45 minutes drag. Badly. The campus setup takes too long to get going, and several supporting characters including Anu Emmanuel, who deserved far better writing — exist mainly to fill space.
The Rao Ramesh pre-climax scene, while well-acted, goes too far. By that point the film has already made its point clearly. Spelling it out again feels like the director didn’t trust the audience.
And the pace overall is slow enough that viewers looking for conventional entertainment will check out well before the second half picks up.
The Arjun Reddy Connection
It’s impossible to review this film without mentioning it: Rashmika Mandanna is in a real-life relationship with Vijay Deverakonda, who starred in Arjun Reddy a film that essentially glorified the kind of toxic, possessive behavior The Girlfriend is directly criticizing.
Whether intentional or not, there’s something quietly powerful about that. The Girlfriend works as a direct answer to the “alpha male romance” genre that’s been dominating Indian cinema for years.
Box Office and OTT
Theatrically the film collected around ₹29 crore a commercial failure by most measures. But on Netflix (streaming since December 5, 2025), it found a much larger and more receptive audience. This is a film that was always going to work better at home.
Final Verdict
The Girlfriend is not a perfect film. It’s slow, occasionally preachy, and wastes some of its supporting cast. But it’s also sincere in a way that most Telugu films aren’t willing to be. Rashmika Mandanna gives the kind of performance that reminds you she’s genuinely talented beyond the commercial hits.
Watch it on Netflix. Just don’t go in expecting a feel-good love story this one’s meant to make you think.
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Where can I watch The Girlfriend 2025?
The Girlfriend is streaming on Netflix since December 5, 2025. It’s available in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Hindi — so no subtitle struggles depending on your language preference.
Did The Girlfriend do well at the box office?
Honestly, no. It collected around ₹29 crore theatrically, which was disappointing given the hype around Rashmika. But the Netflix numbers told a very different story — the film found its real audience on OTT.
Is The Girlfriend suitable for family viewing?
It carries a U/A certificate, but the themes — emotional manipulation, toxic relationships, gaslighting — are quite mature. Fine for adults and older teenagers, but probably not a family movie night pick.
How long is The Girlfriend?
2 hours 18 minutes. The first half moves slowly — fair warning. But the second half, especially the final 30 minutes, makes up for it.
