-Written by Kyle Bain.
Tiger Stripes is a metaphorical film that follows Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal), an eleven-year-old girl facing the inevitable changes of a tween. As her body begins to change in unexpected ways, she is faced with the backlash of friends and family, forced to face the facts that life will never be the same again.
The film opens to Zaffan and her friends dancing and making a mockery of their culture in a school bathroom. They are seen and heard making crude remarks about their wardrobes, laughing at staff members, and being insubordinate in a number of ways. Tiger Stripes starts off on the wrong foot, immediately expressing to viewers that these three girls, with Zaffan in particular, are obnoxious, untrustworthy, and ultimately ineffectual. The film’s exposition needed to provide viewers with a rooting preference, with a character that they could latch onto and follow throughout the film–but Writer-Director Amanda Nell Eu fails to do this. With that it felt that the film began spiraling in its opening moments, and it lost me within minutes.
Tiger Stripes continues to develop slowly, seemingly lacking substance along the way. There’s really only enough content for maybe thirty minutes, and had the film been significantly shorter than its hour-and-thirty-five minute runtime, there's a chance that a faster pace could have allowed things to feel less frumpy, that viewers could have gotten and remained on board throughout. However, there’s so much dead space in Tiger Stripes, and I constantly found myself drifting further and further from the unappealing Zaffan and her story.
The one thing that managed to pull me back in from time to time was the landscape. Taking place in a small town located in Selangor, Malaysia, Tiger Stripes presents viewers with beautiful visuals that do help to pull us through the frumpy, challenging narrative. Again and again I found myself entranced by the beauty of Selangor–and thank God for this, because it’s the only thing that kept me engaged.
I do understand the purpose of this film, as it focuses heavily on the changes that young girls experience as they go through puberty, and the backlash that they can sometimes face in different cultures. With this Tiger Stripes does have the potential to reach a niche audience, but it’s still not for me.
Tiger Stripes is incredibly slow, terribly boring, and it’s a massive challenge to get through. At no point throughout the course of the film did I find myself entertained, enjoying nearly anything that transpired. As a result of the early character development I found myself rooting for the film to end, with no preference at all otherwise. Zaffan is obnoxious, and her friends aren’t much better. With her being the focus of the film, with Eu and Haillay unwilling to veer from her story, the film was ultimately overrun by negative characters, incapable of entertaining.
Written & Directed by Amanda Nell Eu.
Starring Zafreen Zairizal, Piqa, Deena Ezral, June Lojong, Khairunazwan Rodzy, etc.
3.5/10 = WORTH WATCHING, BUT YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
