Tiger Girl (2017)

Tiger and Vanilla, two young women in their early twenties, live in Berlin. Tiger lives in a loft in a shared-apartment arrangement with two men about her age, or alone in a decommissioned bus; Vanilla is currently training to become a security guard after failing the police entrance exam. Their paths cross three times before they finally meet in a decisive encounter: one night, on a deserted subway platform, three drunk young men aggressively harass Vanilla. Tiger appears out of nowhere and almost single-handedly defeats the attackers with martial arts techniques and a baseball bat. Vanilla, who until then had seemed fearful and insecure, actively joins in, and their shared success gives rise to a kind of friendship of convenience. Bolstered by the authority of the security uniforms Vanilla has obtained, the two begin patrolling the city together, looking for passersby to deceive, humiliate and generally “rip off”—that is, rob. At first, they are mainly in it for the thrill. Since Tiger apparently supports their three-person household on her own, material gain is also a motive from the outset. It becomes their main goal only when one of the two men claims that a dealer is seriously threatening him over unpaid debts. Tiger gets the money without her boyfriend knowing, but then discovers that he has deceived her. Vanilla, for her part, changes quickly and grows increasingly confident. She also stands out more and more for her defiant behavior in her security-training group. She is constantly at odds with her instructor, and it becomes clear that Vanilla is unable to recognize boundaries. This shortcoming increasingly strains her relationship with Tiger as well. Their patrols—first with Tiger, then with two security trainees who have been expelled along with her—spiral further and further out of control because Vanilla experiences the use of violence as a rush of power and makes it an end in itself. Tiger’s criticism no longer gets through to her, and eventually the two turn on each other in a fight and go their separate ways again.