Siyou Tan’s debut film “Amoeba” is a vivacious, beautifully acted and imaginatively styled coming of age film about four teenage girls in a strict single-sex school in Singapore. It premieres this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The main island of Singapore, a former British colony, is small yet economically very wealthy having–according to Wikipedia–”the highest PPP-adjusted GDP per capita in the world.” But being a teenager there can be challenging: corporal punishment (including caning) is still allowed in schools, parents have huge expectations of their children to get excellent grades, and dissent is deeply frowned upon. It’s said you can’t chew gum there! (I looked it up–it’s not illegal to chew, they just don’t sell it there.)

Choo Xin Yu (Ranice Tay) is a rebellious 16-year-old at the Confucian Girls’ School she attends. (Though mildly so compared to the kind of juvenile delinquency common here.) We first see her as she awkwardly drags her desk into an already convened class she has been assigned to. (The scene brings the first pages of “Madame Bovary” to mind.) It doesn’t take her long to make an impression on the others. She’s nominated to be class monitor which infuriates her. “It makes you the teacher’s servant,” she protests. Choo becomes friends with three other classmates: swim team member Sofia Tay (Shi-An Lim), the somewhat spoiled Vanessa Scarlett Ooi (Nicole Lee) and Gina Wong (Genevieve Tan), the clown of the foursome.

Playing in the construction site for the school’s new sports center, they discover a cave filled with mysterious relics from the history of the many mythical beings of their country. For a brief moment it looks like the film will become an Asian version of the 1985 film “The Goonies,” but then it pivots when the foursome decide to emulate a violent street gang. Vanessa’s driver, Uncle Phoon (played by veteran Tawainese actor Jack Kao), coaches them on the principles and techniques of being in a gang. This is all pretty innocent fun until the school principal, Adeline (Jo Tan), impounds their camcorder and shows the mischievous (“Fuck you Ms. Adeline!”) videos to their parents. Vanessa’s mother, a wealthy member of the school board, complains that it’s just young girls having fun but Choo is singled out for extra work and brutally punished by her mother.

A sub-plot involves Choo’s belief that a ghost lives in her room, a claim that Sofia tries unsuccessfully to document on camera. There is a tender scene in which Choo wants to kiss her friend but can’t get up the nerve. (None of the four girls express interest in boys but there is no overt discussion of lesbianism, though in Tan’s director notes she describes them as “closeted lesbians.”)

This gang of misfits are played with superb craft and energy by the four young actors as they navigate mishaps and adventures which remind us of classic school films such as “If,” “The 400 Blows” and “Zéro de Conduite.” One delightful and memorable sequence involves a school play they put on with colorful, inventive costumes; it’s a burlesque of the founding of the country and the ridiculous “Merlion” (part fish/part lion) statue that has become a symbol of Singapore.

Choo faces a crisis of conscience as the friends study for an exam that will determine which junior college they’ll attend. They dread being split up but how can they guarantee the same level of test results? In the most powerful scene of the film, Choo self-sabotages by giving her angry, honest reaction to a drawing of the Merlio:  “There have never been Lions on this island… How do we get out of this aquarium,” Choo demands. 

Director Tan, who grew up in Singapore but now lives in Los Angeles, has previously had her short films screened at Cannes; this fun but also heartbreaking first feature makes me anxious to see her future work.