This
could be awkward. Tiger and “Vanilla the Killer” are all about laying
smack-downs on grabby, harassing men. Devin Faraci, the social justice warrior accused
of sexual assault is allegedly exactly the kind of guy they are out to punish.
Yet, their film will be screening against a background of noise and controversy
generated by news the festival organization tried to quietly slip Faraci back
into the organization through the back door. It is fair to say people were not
happy. Tiger and Vanilla would know how to handle this problem, but getting
their own lives together is an entirely different matter in Jakob Lass’s Tiger Girl (trailer here), which screens
during the 2017 Fantastic Fest.
Vanilla
wanted to be a cop, but her first attempt at the physical exam ended badly.
While waiting to re-apply, she signs on as a trainee with a well-equipped
security firm. She is still pretty mousy, so she needs to be saved from the
cloddish Theo (a successful police academy applicant), whether she admits it or
not. Fortunately, Tiger is on the scene, thanks to a borrowed taxi cab. Around
the second time Tiger saves her from a thuggish punk, Vanilla starts to realize
this could be the start of an empowering friendship.
Soon,
Vanilla snags a security uniform for Tiger, which gives them a virtual license
to harass yuppies and misogynists. Vanilla practically idolizes Tiger, so it
hurts when her two squat-mates-slash-lovers refuse to accept her. Suddenly,
Vanilla is in no mood to accept perceived slights, spurring her to sabotage her
somewhat promising security career. Just as she starts escalating her violent
antics, Tiger begins to rethink her anti-social behavior.
Frankly,
Tiger Girl could have been a
challenging film about growing up and accepting the benefits of the social
contract, but it is undone by its problematic conclusion. For the sake of
crowd-pleasing, Lass more or less accepts Vanilla’s reckless attacks on
innocent passersby.
Regardless,
it is quite a showcase for the ferocious talents of Ella Rumpf, who previously made
quite an impression as the older cannibal sister in Raw. As the tough but vulnerable Tiger, she physically resembles a
young Kristen Stewart, but her command of her craft is much more advanced. She
truly commands the screen. Obviously, Vanilla has to be meeker and more
impressionable, but the extreme disparity between the fiery Rumpf and the Maria
Dragus’s hollow-on-the-inside Vanilla hardly seems unfair.
There
are several fight scenes interspersed throughout Tiger Girl, which is presumably why it was selected by both
Fantasia and Fantastic Fest. However, fans will be disappointed Lass cuts away
from a fight with a high-kicking martial arts-trained gallerist, played by the
striking (in both meanings of the word) Helga Wretman. Ultimately, it does not
add up to as much as Lass hoped, but it certainly announces Rumpf as a major talent
to contend with. Earning a qualified recommendation, Tiger Girl should be quite an ironic screening experience when it
plays tomorrow (9/24) and Monday (9/25) at this year’s Fantastic Fest.
