There are some arresting images and bright performances in this bristling debut feature from Malaysian film-maker Amanda Nell Eu, who heads off into a jungle of the mind for a supernatural-realist drama and coming-of-age chiller about the female body and sexuality, with hints of Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is possibly a little bit derivative and sometimes seems to be treading water in narrative terms, but only after making us submit to a very woozy and hallucinatory experience.
The scene is a Muslim school for girls in Malaysia whose pupils are required to submit to conservative dress and attitudes; in the English language class, they are presented with sentences such as: “The father goes to work. The mother cooks at home.” Twelve-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) hangs out with her friends Farah (Deena Ezral) and Mariam (Piqa), and from the very first we see that she is a natural rebel and leader: she is being filmed on someone’s phone in the toilets, dancing and removing her headscarf, a dangerously transgressive act. The teaching staff are highly annoyed at the girls getting up to no good in this semi-private place and the headteacher (Fatimah Abu Bakar) harangues them for their bad attitudes, and laments the fact that Chinese pupils beat the Malaysian in exam results.
