‘It was terrifying – but screw it’: the director who had to disown her film to qualify for the Oscars
The director Amanda Nell Eu has always been a bit of a rebel, she says over video chat from her home in Kuala Lumpur. “When I was a teenager, I was sometimes labelled a monster by my parents and teachers. I probably wasn’t the most obedient child.” Now Eu has turned the horrors of puberty into an actual horror movie. Tiger Stripes is her feature debut, a funny and political film with a whopping air punch of girl power. Set in a conservative Muslim school, it mixes body horror with Mean Girls energy and a sprinkle of Malaysian folklore.
Eu cast her trio of leading girls during lockdown, putting adverts on Instagram and searching through TikTok profiles: “Schools were shut, everything was shut.” Zafreen Zairizal plays 12-year-old Zaffan, a rebel who is constantly yanking off her headscarf and daringly wears a bra to school. Zaffan’s body is changing: hairs sprout and spots erupt. Then, when she becomes the first girl in class to get her period, she’s ostracised by her two best friends. “You’re dirty now,” adds her mother.
The shame still associated with periods in Malaysia was highlighted in 2021 by media coverage of period “spot checks” in some schools. Reports detailed the practice of girls who’ve not attended prayers because they’re on their period having to prove it. “Sometimes a prefect would give girls a Q-tip and wait outside the toilet. It’s very invasive,” Eu says. “I remember seeing a hashtag, ‘Make schools a safer place.’ Because sometimes they’re not at all.”
Tiger Stripes takes society’s fear about female bodies and turns it into a triumphant narrative. Zaffan gains autonomy over her body by literally becoming a monster: a powerful girltiger, the feline equivalent of a werewolf.
Eu got hooked on horror movies in her teens. “It’s my safe space,” she grins. “More realistic films terrify me a lot more than monsters and blood.” She always loved the range available to women in the genre: “It was a place where I could see female characters be evil or selfish or greedy or wild.”
In conversation, Eu is funny and forthright. She lived in the UK for 17 years from the age of 11, and her English bears a trace of the home counties. In January she cropped her hair short, which only adds to the cool-girl aura. So, too, do the photos of her at Cannes last year dressed in a custom-designed jumpsuit of pink-and-black satin with giant rosettes – a look that was punkmeets-Poor Things. Tiger Stripes was the first film by a Malaysian female director to play at the festival, winning best film in the Critics’ Week strand.
Eu’s own experience of school was drastically different from Zaffan’s. She was sent to the UK to attend a Buckinghamshire boarding school. In her teens, she had a rebellious angst-filled phase, “breaking rules, running away from the school.” Did she get expelled? “No! I never got caught.”
Was boarding school at that age a shock? “Actually, the biggest shock was coming back when I was 27, having spent so much time in the UK. I felt like such an outsider, and it was really painful.” After A-levels she’d studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins in London, thinking it would offer better job prospects than a film degree, but she spent most of her time dabbling in animation and film. Her tutors would ask: Why are you here? “I was like: ‘Please let me pass. My Asian parents will kill me!’” After graduating she took an MA at the London Film School.
When Eu moved back to Malaysia aged 27, she was home, but didn’t feel like she belonged. “I didn’t know who
I was. That was a big struggle of identity. Part of it was: I am Malaysian but I don’t feel Malaysian. I didn’t speak like everyone else. I didn’t behave …” She shrugs. “I think that was really what made me realise the kind of films I wanted to make.”
What kind of films? “Films about outsiders and misunderstood characters trying to find their own place in society or in the world.” Before Tiger Stripes, she directed a pair of short films featuring spirits from Malaysian folklore. One of them, the Pontianak, a beauty who entices men only to attack them, features in Tiger Stripes – and has long history on the silver screen. “I always joke that the Pontianak is like the Beyoncé of all the monsters, the queen bee, an iconic character.” When she was little, tales of these characters thrilled and terrified her, but in her 20s, they became her heroes.
Tiger Stripes was selected by Malaysia as its Oscar entry for this year’s awards. But the version released in Malaysian cinemas last October was censored in such a way that Eu released a statement disowning it. She’s not allowed to talk about what was cut, but the Guardian previously reported that deleted scenes included one showing period blood on a sanitary towel, and another in which Zaffan dances in a waterfall – full of joy, hair to the wind.
That last edit was particularly painful. “As Malaysians, we know that we have to go through censorship. You’re ready for it. But what hurt was the things they cut out were the heart of the film. It was censoring the beauty of a young girl, her freedom.” Her instinct was to pull the film from cinemas. “With the cuts, the film is pointless,” she shrugs. But to qualify for the Oscars, it had to be released in local cinemas for seven days. So holding their noses, Eu and her producer agreed to the censored version – and wrote a statement disowning it.
“It was terrifying. But I had to say something at the end of the day. I was like: screw it. Let’s just do it.” If nothing else the experience has shed a light on censorship, she adds. “We were celebrated and selected for the Oscar entry: ‘You make Malaysia proud, but don’t show this to Malaysians.’ It’s almost comedic. Painful and comedic at the same time.”
Wasn’t that risky, putting her neck on the line so publicly? “I don’t know,” Eu says with a dismissive hand wave. “I mean, I’m always a very risky person. I follow what I believe in, follow my heart. If I strongly believe in something, I’m not going to back down.”
• Tiger Stripes is in UK cinemas on 17 May
Horror is a genre where women can be evil, selfish, greedy and wild
make their film debuts. But the starstudded cast could not save it from being fairly well panned.
It’s not the acting: Streep is movingly vulnerable and Nicholson is suitably slimy. It’s rumoured that he repeatedly flirted with Streep during filming while in a long-term relationship with Anjelica Huston and while Streep was pregnant. In scenes depicting the couple when they are (at least ostensibly) happy, there’s chemistry as well as moments of genuine sweetness. Any feeling that we are being kept at arm’s length reflects how Rachel keeps Mark at a distance, as well as the facade she projects to prevent herself from falling apart. It shows the devastating banality of marital crises; how even in the depths of despair, people have to press on.
To my mind, critics have historically focused too much on the film’s caustic burn and entirely missed its beating heart. The late Roger Ebert condemned Heartburn for lacking Ephron’s usual “loin-churning passion” and said her lack of objectivity made it “bitter” and “sour”. I like to imagine Ephron responding with a recipe for lemon loaf or a whiskey sour, as befitting her character Rachel’s occupation as a food writer. The film’s characters, Ebert scathingly concluded, were “‘only marginally interesting”’. In some ways he might have been right. But I would argue that the very elements he criticised are what make it real and relatable, and therefore the truest of Ephron’s meditations on love.
Is Heartburn a perfect movie? No. Is it a date night pick? Probably not, unless you’re planning on dumping your date that night. But is it as cold and charmless as critics have claimed? I think not. I would go so far as to say it’s inherently hopeful. As Rachel finally decides whether to forgive Mark, we feel hopeful she will find love again: even if it’s for herself.
As for Ephron, she was married three times and the third one stuck: she stayed with the Goodfellas and Casino screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi for more than 20 years. In her final essay collection she wrote a list of what she would miss when she died. It was funny and frank, and consisted of the banalities that make up the tapestry of a life well lived. At the top of the list were her children and husband. She knew a thing or two about real love.
Heartburn is available to stream on Prime Video in Australia, UK and US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
haute couture, lends credence to rumours that Galliano could soon be headed back to a major job in fashion, perhaps a return to Givenchy, where the designer post is vacant.
Galliano’s high profile also hints at the resilience of the behind-thescenes power of Anna Wintour, a staunch advocate for the British designer, who may have influenced the decision making of the Zendaya and Kardashian camps.
Other characters in the power play come and go, but Wintour remains queen. The triumphant red carpet turns for Wintour’s favourite designer might alleviate any disappointment in the night’s high profile no-shows by Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
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Tom Ford appeared to make a silent dig at the new designer of his label, which he sold last year, by choosing not to wear Tom Ford menswear on the red carpet. Instead, his crimson velvet jacket was by Saint Laurent. Amazon was the main sponsor of the night, and it was notable that Jeff Bezos and his fiancee Lauren Sánchez ditched the cowboy hats and sheer dresses of recent public appearances in favour of classic Upper East Side elegance: black tie for Bezos, a stately Oscar de la Renta gown for Sanchez.
The theme of the night was described variously as Garden of Time and Sleeping Beauty. As a bellwether for fashion it is interesting that while both titles seem to lend themselves to bucolic prettiness, the red carpet leaned toward the dark and twisted. In parallel with the spotlight on Galliano, there was a high profile for his contemporary Alexander McQueen.
Newly arrived McQueen designer Seán McGirr dressed Lana Del Rey in a dress and spiked headpiece shrouded in tulle which was a homage to Lee McQueen’s 2006 Widows of Culloden collection, while Kendall Jenner wore two archival McQueen looks, from 1997 and 1999.
Jenner’s choice of two vintage pieces reflected the high status of vintage fashion at the Met Gala. A few years ago, star power was all about having a new designer create a brand new look for you. But having the clout and know-how to access significant pieces from fashion’s most highly prized archives is now the ultimate red carpet flex.