 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Tiger Girl • Year: 2017 • Country: Germany • Director: Jakob Lass • Main cast: Ella Rumpf, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Enno Trebs • Runtime: 90 minutes • Production company: FOGMA GmbH • TRAILER (German language) |
Although this film has been presented as an action film, I would seriously doubt calling Tiger Girl such a thing. Okay, there are some fights, and they might be the center of the plot, but for sure they are not the center of the action. Overall, Tiger Girl is an urban drama, the story of two girls, at first very different characters, that end up in a spiral of violence in a big contemporanean city as Berlin can be. In fact, the name of the city is never mentioned in the movie, for it could be any capital city in any first world country in the world.
At the beginning of the film, Tiger is the wild force of nature, the independent girl who lives everyday flirting with breaking the law. Her lousy job doesn’t identify herself at all since she is nothing but a free soul. On the other hand, Vanilla is the shy and repressed young girl, trying to join the police force as a cry out to get some respect, a respect she feels like she doesn’t even deserve. But one day, Tiger and Vanilla meet (in a violent situation, of course) and everything changes. The two soon start an intense friendship that turns little Vanilla into a crazed woman always looking for action, violence and constant disrespect of the rules.
I wouldn’t say this is a very realistic drama, since the situations and the characters, not only the two main girls but the rest of the different inhabitants of the film, are very extreme personas. Those crazy natures, obviously, drive the plot into crazy situations. At least, the filmmakers chose not to force those situations more than the necessary from its story set up. Otherwise, the movie would end up looking like a joke. Instead, the story flows on its own natural way. Tiger Girl would be closer to titles like Trainspotting (1996) than, for example, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).
Although the movie didn’t get a very good reception in the last Berlinale Festival, or even here at Sitges Film Festival, I think director Jakob Lass made a good job building this story. Under the parameters he set, this movie can’t get any better than it is now. Visually powerful, with a soundtrack that takes a position when it’s needed, and the depiction of the two main characters that, at least me, I instantly fell in love with. And they are very extreme characters, so one can’t get identified with them so easily. Especially the character of Tiger, my favorite one, and wonderfully played by Ella Rumpf, who also starred one of the best titles of the previous edition of the Sitges Festival, Grave (aka Raw) (2016).
I can only do but to recommend this movie. But from everything other critics have said, there are high chances that not everybody in the audience gets as satisfied by it as I was. Still, at least to get your own opinion formed, I would give it a try.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6082614
