Like Woo Ming-Jin’s earlier movies, this was inspired by a newspaper story ? this time, a story about a Malaysian-Chinese woman who used Burmese and Indonesian economic migrants to breed babies which she would sell. However, the film marks a departure from Woo’s usual style and methods. His past work has been contemplative and considered, full of carefully constructed compositions and shot through with larger symbolic implications. This time he worked fast and much more intuitively, staying close to his protagonist Ping-Ping (Lai Fooi-Mun, seen in Charlotte Lim’s My Daughter) as she navigates experiences both positive and negative and gradually hardens her heart: the film shows her exiting the ‘baby factory’ and becoming a ‘tiger’. The effect is to make this a more morally engaging film than the others. It describes a social-economic-psychological trap not unlike those seen in some Fassbinder films, and catches the viewer up in the decisions and moral choices that the situation forces Ping-Ping to make. The moral conclusions are harsh, but Woo remains deeply sensitive to the fragility and vulnerability of his central character. (Tony Rayns)