Selected in Critics’ Week, Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu signs an incisive and eccentric first film that revisits the themes of metamorphosis and adolescence with humor and lightness.
Teasing, impertinent and cheeky, the 12-year-old Zaffan has no equal for wiggling her hips on social networks, undressing to music, removing her veil and getting rid of her schoolgirl uniform. Choreographies filmed by her best friends, accomplices, admiring and enthusiastic too when it comes to trying on a bra for the first time. This light and carefree life changes on the day of the girl’s first period. The rebellious teenager then finds herself mocked and ostracized.
It wasn’t necessarily a good memory. Puberty and the transformations of adolescence, Amanda Nell Eu experienced them as a trauma. For her first feature film, the Malaysian director was inspired by her own story. “I felt bad about myself she says in the presentation file of the film. I hated my body and was terrified of all this upheaval. To that
added to the unpleasant comments of people who judged my body as if it were a topic of public conversation. I wanted to tell this horror of the body of a girl who discovers all these changes in her.
Malaysian folk myths and legends
From this rural town in Malaysia where obedient women are invited to fit into the mold that has been imagined for them, from this small community as funny as it is rigid that is the college, Zaffan will first be dismissed, before rediscover, almost in spite of herself, an almost animal power and ferocity. His mutation gradually affects everyone around him. The film then navigates between the norm and irrational agitation, the spirit Teen Movie from the first sequences quickly slides towards the fantastic.
tiger stripes summons the popular myths and legends of Malaysia, these monsters and ghosts, very often female, which permeate a daily life marked as much by religion as by superstition.
If we smile at the comical scenes in the courtyard of the college where the outdated director relies on a charlatan, also a fan of social networks, supposed to cure all this small community of collective hysteria, if the game of the three actresses Zafreen Zairizal, (the rebel Zaffan), Deena Ezral, (her rival Farah) and Piqa (Mariam) is remarkably spontaneity and vitality, on the other hand it is difficult to give credit to the metamorphoses of the young Zaffan .
tiger stripes lacks neither audacity nor humor to address the issue of women’s status in Malaysia but leaves a taste of unfinished business.
The sheet
Gender : Fantastic
Director: Amanda Nell Eu
Actors: Zafreen Zairizal (Zaffan), Deena Ezral (Farah) Piqa (Mariam), Shaheisy Sam (Doctor Rahim)
Country : MALAYSIA / TAIWAN / SINGAPORE / FRANCE / GERMANY / NETHERLANDS / INDONESIA / QATAR
Duration : 1h35
Exit : March 2024