Stream It Or Skip It
Published Feb. 9, 2024, 5:30 p.m. ET
Interesting story behind Cat Person (now streaming on Hulu): The film adapts a viral New Yorker quick story by Kristen Roupenian, who additionally wrote the spec script for Bodies Bodies Bodies (considered one of my favourite movies of 2022). It options two gifted sort-of-newcomers in CODA’s Emilia Jones and Succession’s Nicholas Braun. It’s directed by Susanna Fogel, co-writer of Booksmart (considered one of my favourite movies of 2019). It simply OOZED with potential – after which it debuted at Sundance 2023, the place producers reportedly turned down a reasonably good distribution provide from Netflix, preferring a theatrical launch (which earned a paltry $350k). And now the film unceremoniously peters out within the streaming milieu, the place it’s more likely to get extra eyeballs on it than ever. But does it deserve it? Maybe, I say. Maybe.
CAT PERSON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: “Listen, concession stand girl. Why don’t you give me your number.” OK, so the man isn’t precisely a romantic. Robert (Braun) is a bit doofy and awkward. And Margot (Jones) appears, properly, bored sufficient to truly give him her quantity. Maybe he’ll turn into extra than simply the Large Popcorn And Red Vines Guy. He’s a bit of older and she or he’s a school pupil, however who’s counting anyway? Margot’s our protagonist, and she or he research archaeology or anthropology or one thing; no matter it’s, she works in a lab old bones underneath the steerage of Prof. Isabella Rossellini Who’s In The Movie For Two Or Three Scenes And Uses Her Ant Colony To Speak In Metaphors For The Human Male-Female Dynamic. Her roommate and greatest pal is Taylor (Geraldine Viswanathan), who advises towards Margot giving her quantity to Robert. Taylor moderates a Subreddit titled “Vagenda,” and appears to make a sport out of rooting out members who use female usernames however are males in actual life; she will be able to add feminist-victimhood shade to any matter you possibly can consider.
The film steadily cuts away to scenes that appear very actual however are simply Margot envisioning worst-case eventualities. Example: She’s hanging out with Robert and unexpectedly he’s locked her in a closet and choking her, which explains the Margaret Atwood quote that opens the film, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Such is the unlucky dynamic, and it performs out at any time when Margot finishes work late at evening and has to make a protracted walk again to campus and her dorm room, on a path lined with emergency telephones. She and Robert textual content lots. He’s fast with the witty banter, and far more endearing than “Listen, concession stand girl. Why don’t you give me your number.” That’s the distinction between our distant selves and our IRL selves. The face-to-face stuff is exhausting.
One evening Margot’s working within the bone lab with the ant colony within the nook. She texts with Robert who agrees to carry her a snack, and so they hang around a bit. He appears good sufficient I assume, save for the nightmare cutaway scenes wherein he viciously assaults our protag. He unintentionally locks them in a closet – I do know, proper? – after which breaks the door to get out and unintentionally smashes the ant colony, so there’s the metaphor in items all around the ground, biting Margot’s uncovered ankles. It’s type of humorous. They half and agree that this wasn’t a date-date, however they need to go on one quickly. She goes home for a break and so they textual content lots and she or he sends him a mildly racy picture, only a little bit of cleavage, and he takes means too lengthy to answer. How can we interpret that? Not replying is definitely a reply, proper? Hmm. She will get again and he asks her out to see The Empire Strikes Back, which ain’t her bag, however she agrees. They go and it’s a bit of bizarre, not as snappy and chemical as their txt spk, and as issues progress in direction of bodily intimacy, Margot begins leaping to her imaginary manifestations of Robert in remedy. They’re building towards one thing right here – one thing so cringe that I simply can’t describe it. You may simply need to see it for your self.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Promising Young Woman isn’t getting older properly, however it’ll age a bit of higher than Cat Person as a post-#MeToo story about navigating the treacherous waters of the patriarchy.
Performance Worth Watching: You need to admire Jones for embodying a personality who’s prickly and imperfect and never at all times solely likable, however nonetheless earns the good thing about our doubt.
Memorable Dialogue: This howler of an change:
Robert: I wanna f— you so unhealthy. Do you wanna f— me?
Margot, chirpily: Mm hm!
Sex and Skin: They f—. And contemplating the film takes Margot’s point-of-view, it’s not attractive. Not in any respect.
Our Take: Heart emoji, heart-eyes smiley emoji, leaping dolphin emoji. That’s what Robert texts to Margot on The Day After. Her non-reply is a reply, after all. She might’ve texted eyeroll face, or shrugging girl, or barf emoji, however she didn’t. She desires to let him down gently, to curtail any potential retaliatory ways that she almost actually is imagining. Taylor, nevertheless, thinks Margot ought to be direct and trustworthy with him, as a result of that’s how idealists assume, regardless of the world being dictated primarily by realists.
Transparent provocation is Cat Person’s major M.O.: These are the horrors of courting, and the horrors of being a young girl who’s courting, and the horrors of not understanding for sure what the person you’re courting is able to. Margot’s suspicion of Robert lies in his declare that he has cats, however when she was at his home, she didn’t see any. Is he mendacity to her to make himself look extra endearing? Is he only a goofy, awkward man, or a serial killer? Will a bit of kindness encourage him to be a sweetheart? Or will a dollop of exhausting fact flip him into the Lone Decapitator? Who can inform?
Robert’s not a personality – he’s a straw man. And that’s OK, if the movie is satirical and has a degree to make, which it’s not and it does, respectively, and that’s why it’s not significantly useful. Fogel and Jones work exhausting to convey Margot’s deeply trepidatious perspective, poisoned as it’s by omnipresent worry. It’s absolutely a standard feeling amongst girls (once more, bear in mind the it’s-funny-but-also-not-at-all-funny Atwood quote), and so far as I can inform as a human male, Fogel and Jones faucet into it with earnest authenticity.
The movie wavers, not sure of itself, in a tonal fog of almost-satirical comedy, realist drama and manipulative psychological thriller tropes. It lacks subtlety, discovering nails and smashing them with hammers. It doesn’t at all times make sense. The last act borders on cluttery, hyperactive nonsense. But that is the place I throw in a qualifier: But. I laughed very often. Jones offers a great, moderately complicated central efficiency. I used to be held in thrall by its cagey narrative. And That Scene is viciously memorable, hideous and uncomfortably humorous on the identical time, executed with the kind of imaginative and prescient and readability that may tip a messy mediocrity over into watchable territory. And that it does. You may simply recognize Cat Person for its occasional fearlessness, regardless of its flaws.
Our Call: I used to be intrigued by Cat Person’s skill to overstate its thematic intentions whereas nonetheless maintaining the true nature of its characters nebulous. It’s type of a multitude, however a minimum of it’s a captivating mess. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a contract author and movie critic based mostly in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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