It’s difficult to screw up a coming-of-age story if you have good intentions. The indignities of puberty immediately lead to internal conflict, and while the physical changes an adolescent goes through is central to the attendant drama, filmmakers are often squeamish about showing how the human body counteracts the confidence of people that age. The Malaysian film, Tiger Stripes, confronts the physical challenges of puberty head on, and does so in a milieu that is both enlightening and discomfiting for those of us who have little insight into that milieu. The story mostly takes place at a Muslim girls school in the countryside, where the spirited and irreverent Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal, intense and totally believable) is the first among her peers to have her period. We first encounter Zaffan making a provocative dance TikTok in the school’s toilet, throwing off her hijab and gyrating ecstatically in a tank top. When one of her pals, the more dignified Farah (Deena Ezral), remarks that Zaffan is wearing a bra, she quickly takes it off so that Farah can try it on herself, albeit over her clothing. Naturally, the two, along with their other BFF Mariam (Piqa), are busted by a teacher.

Zaffan is presented to us as a free spirit whose inherent rebelliousness will surely rub any adults of authority in her orbit the wrong way, but once the cycle of menstruation kicks in her classmates find out (she’s banned from classroom prayers while bleeding) and quickly resent her, claiming she smells bad. These girls, of course, will very soon undergo the same physical change, but as anyone who has ever gone to school knows, children’s cruelty is not logic-based. Predictably, Zaffan acts out, talking back to her scandalized mother (her father is genial and hands-off) and lashing out at her friends when they start to shun her. Most of this kind of plot development is par for the coming-of-age course, but director Amanda Nell Eu goes farther, depicting Zaffan’s bodily maturation as a literal metamorphosis, wherein her anger is physicalized as a predatory life force, complete with claws, glowing red eyes, a ravenous carnivorous appetite, and even a tail. 

Though tame on the body horror scale, the movie nevertheless realizes in visceral terms the inner turmoil a young girl may go through in trying to square her expanding understanding of the world with the discomfort of impending sexual readiness, and the results are startling. Western viewers will likely fixate on the religious elements of the story, but Eu is not afraid of bodily fluids and the kind of violent temper that repressed adolescent urges can produce. For me, the cultural disconnections are most interesting in the way Eu wields humor: the school principal decrying the fact that the Chinese students always do much better academically (“The Malays have to work harder”), and an opportunistic shaman (Shaheizy Sam) exploiting Zaffan’s “possession” as a means of expanding his brand (“Remember to tag Dr. Rahim on your videos”). The shaman’s comeuppance is simultaneously the most shocking and funniest thing in the movie. Tiger Stripes never lets you forget it’s an allegory, and some viewers will wonder if all the magical realism is simply taking place in Zaffan’s head, but it doesn’t make what happens on screen any less relatable. 

In Malay. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

Tiger Stripes home page in Japanese

photo (c) G Grrrl PIctures, Flash Forward Entertainment, Akanga Film Asia, Still Moving, Weydemann Bros., PRPL, Kawankawan Media 2023