A young woman’s coming of age becomes a body-horror nightmare in Tiger Stripes, the first ever film by a Malaysian female director to be selected for an official Cannes festival slot. Partly inspired by her own traumatic puberty, writer-director Amanda Nell Eu’s charmingly off-beat debut blends dark humour, social commentary, sparing use of visual effects and a healthy fondness for pulp cinema. A buzzy premiere in the Critics’ Week section at Cannes, the film’s genre-friendly elements, sassy feminist themes and sympathetic nods to the TikTok generation should boost its chances at further festival slots and commercial break-out potential.
Chronicling a 12-year-old girl’s mysterious metamorphosis into some kind of mythical beast, Tiger Stripes draws on south-east Asian folklore, notably the Indonesian “were-tiger” Harimau Jadian, though these pliable superstitions have equivalents across most other cultures. The story began to take shape when Eu came to recognise the female monsters familiar from her childhood fairy tales as thinly veiled projections of deep-rooted male unease about powerful, rebellious women. Previous puberty-themed horror movies including Carrie (1976), Ginger Snaps (2000) and Jennifer’s Body (2009) have trod this allegorical path before, of course, but Tiger Stripes arguably delivers more timely critical bite by addressing teenage girlhood pressures in a socially conservative Islamic society.
Luminous screen novice Zafreen Zairizal stars as Zaffan, a 12-year-old classroom misfit at an all-girls school in rural Malaysia, who is suddenly hit by puberty and its attendant bodily changes. Aside from the shock of menstruation, Zaffan finds she is also shedding hair, her skin a map of itchy blotches, her nails loosening and stretching. In the midst of this physical and emotional trauma, her parents remain remote and unsympathetic, while formerly close classmates bully and reject her. The shame surrounding female bodies in patriarchal cultures is a key theme here, but Eu is also tapping into universal tropes about bitchy school cliques. In her Cannes press notes, she cites Mean Girls (2004) as a favourite film.
Her body typically concealed beneath headscarves and long dresses, Zaffan’s physical transformation is initially invisible to the wider world. But soon her glowing eyes, heightened senses, wild mood swings and unnatural ability to scramble up trees become hard to ignore. Following a wave of hysteria, fainting fits and mysterious disappearances at school, Zaffan comes under suspicion of demonic possession. Spurious, vain, self-promoting exorcist Dr Rahim (Khairunazwan Rodz) is summoned to cure the problem, but his powers prove no match for a 12-year-old girl with a growing fondness for feasting on the raw flesh of forest animals. This exorcism sequence is the film’s strongest comic set-piece, and it is surely no accident that Eu depicts the sole prominent male character as a blustering clown with an overinflated sense of his own importance.
An appealing blend of humour, horror and feminist messaging, Tiger Stripes is a very strong debut, buzzing with great ideas. That said, it inevitably exhibits a few early-career flaws. Listless pacing and low-voltage tension weaken the more suspense-driven sections, while the ending feels a little abrupt and inconclusive. Eu could certainly have pushed the pulpy genre elements more in the final act with a full-blooded claws-out monster-movie rampage.
Among the high-calibre technical credits, Jimmy Gimferrer’s lustrous cinematography lends these vaguely supernatural events a heightened, other-worldly beauty while an ever-present backdrop of hissing, droning, rumbling rainforest noises makes superlative use of sound design as ominous dramatic shading. Crucially, the young actors also have enormous charm. Eu’s inspired decision to punctuate Tiger Stripes with phone-camera footage shot by the cast themselves lends this story an authentically contemporary teen voice. Bookending the story with TikTok clips of Zairizal dancing to high-energy pop music is also a gloriously simple flourish that gently reinforces the theme of female bodily liberation from oppressive patriarchal rules. Pure joy.
Director, screenwriter: Amanda Nell Eu
Cast: Zafreen Zairizal, Deena Ezral, Piqa, Shaheisy Sam, Jun Lojong, Khairunazwan Rodz, Fatimah Abu Bakar
Cinematography: Jimmy Gimferrer
Editing: Carlo Francisco Manatad
Music: Gabber Modus Operandi
Producers: Foo Fei Ling, Patrick Mao Huang, Fran Borgia, Juliette Lepoutre, Pierre Menahem, Jonas Weydemann, Ellen Havenith, Yulia Evina Bhara
Production company: Ghost Grrrl Pictures (Malaysia)
World sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Critics’ Week)
In Malay
95 minutes
