In Amanda Nell Eu\u2019s coming-of-age tale, \u201cTiger Stripes,\u201d a young girl in Malaysia undergoes the mortifying experience of puberty, but with a twist. Not only is she trying her parents\u2019 and teachers\u2019 patience, showing off her new bra strap to classmates at her all-girls school, and getting her period, but she\u2019s also developing an inexplicable rash, her nails and hair are falling off, her eyes glow red in the dark, and she\u2019s repressing new uncontrollable urges. Growing up is hell, and it doesn\u2019t get any easier when magical realism enters the frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) is a bright-eyed troublemaker who, along with her best friends Farah (Deena Ezral) and Mariam (Piqa), make silly TikTok dance videos, play in the river on their way home, put stickers on random objects, and maybe play a little too rough until one of them stops the horseplay. But the childlike games come to an end when Zaffan is the first to get her period. Farah and Mariam distance themselves from her just as she\u2019s going through inexplicable changes. Zaffan\u2019s mom judges her harshly for her behavior and her dad seems rather disinterested in his daughter\u2019s life. She tries desperately to hide the signs she\u2019s changing, but hiding rashes and missing nails only provokes more teasing from her classmates. When a group of girls bully Zaffan in the bathroom, they fall into a mass hysteria, causing a pompous medical officer to declare Zaffan is suffering from demonic possession. Backed into a corner by society, Zaffan unleashes her newfound self in a show of strength and unbridled rage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTiger Stripes\u201d dabbles in body horror without leaning fully into \u201cThe Fly\u201d-level prosthetics. Instead, Zaffan is wrestling more with the psychological and emotional side of her story, especially her fear of losing friends and control of her body. As she tries harder to behave and fall in line with her school and parents\u2019 expectations, she\u2019s doubling her efforts to hide in plain sight, unaware of the damage it\u2019s doing to her. Not all of the special effects work, but a few missteps can\u2019t diminish the film\u2019s impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amanda Nell Eu\u2019s feature debut is a lively coming-of-age story that mixes the mundane and the supernatural with ease. The script co-written by Eu with Samm Haillay handles the schoolyard and home drama just as intensely as Zaffan\u2019s fighting with her body\u2019s changes. Zairizal is so vibrant in her earnest performance, relishing in the vicious anger of her character\u2019s arc but also sensitive to Zaffan\u2019s heartbreaking isolation, bringing twinges of pain and fear to her frame and face when her mother is criticizing her or when the schoolgirls are ganging up to hurt her. Even when we think we know where this story is headed, some mysteries can\u2019t be easily explained, like when a different glowing set of eyes stare back at Zaffan from the tops of a tree, is it a premonition of what’s in store for Zaffan or is it a fellow tigress unbound by society’s norms? In any case, the movie ends where it begins, as a celebration of a playful girlhood, unbothered by the pressures of the outside world.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Amanda Nell Eu\u2019s coming-of-age tale, \u201cTiger Stripes,\u201d a young girl in Malaysia undergoes the mortifying experience of puberty, but with a twist. Not only is she trying her parents\u2019 and teachers\u2019 patience, showing off her new bra strap to classmates at her all-girls school, and getting her period, but she\u2019s also developing an inexplicable …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[45,48],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama-movies","tag-drama","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}