The Tiger Factory

Ping Ping is 19 and hopes to go away to work to Japan, she is shuffled between odd jobs, cleaning dishes in a rundown restaurant, working in a pig farm and is also involved in a « baby factory » scam, pairing young women with migrant workers and then selling the babies off for profit, run by her ruthless exploitive aunt. Based on a news report and shot by a handheld camera seeming to grab shots on the fly, The Factory Tiger turns to a naturalistic, semi-documentary style to describe the young woman’s environment, her dependence network, while drafting an intimate portrait. As Woo say : « I think all my films deal with characters who are stricken with some sort of paralysis, whether it’s fear or longing or a false hope of a better life somewhere else. » The close ongoing staging shudders the heroine’s relevant silence and passivity. It is the awakening of social and maternal awareness that we are witnessing. Being « exploited » brings about the desire to flee Malaysia and its social issues in search of a better life. Our audience would like to see her shake off the melancholic mood that is driving her straight against the « exploiters’ » cynicism. CG