Cat Person

Director: Susanna Fogel (USA). Year of Release: 2023

A 20-year old woman is working behind the food stall in a cinema. As we hear an announcement about the forthcoming sci-fi “B” movie, she keeps herself sane by playing with her phone. As an ungainly tall man approaches, she texts “Older guy incoming, looks like best friend in Apatow movie.” Her friend texts back “tall, dark and problematic”. He orders a large popcorn and some Red Vines. She makes some half-heartedly flirtatious small talk, but he disdainfully ignores her.

Same cinema, same woman behind the counter, same customer. This time, he’s more talkative, if no less rude. “Listen, concession-stand girl,” he says, “why don’t you give me your number?” For reasons best known to herself, she does. Well, he is slightly cute, and his lack of social graces are somehow endearing. The two start to conduct an online relationship, where she realises that his texts are funnier and more charming than he is in real life.

One night, he bursts into the palentology department where she is studying with food that he’s bought from the local 7-11. As usual, he walks a thin line between cute and creepy. The woman, Margot, starts to fantasize about what he does for a living – constuction worker, maybe, or a grave digger or office worker. She also wonders whether he might just be a serial killer. These fantasy sequences show both that Margot has both a fertile information and a healthy level of scepticism.

Robert, for his part, is in his early 30s and has a dubious beard. He says he’s a cat person, which may just be a front to make him seem less dangerous, as there are no signs of any cats in his house. He is a terrible kisser, and gives off the aura of a sexually inexperienced incel. His hero is Harrison Ford, and he sends Margot a series of videos of Ford’s on screen characters refusing to accept that No means No.

Somehow, inevitably, Margot and Robert end up in bed, and conduct the most excrutiating sex scene you may have seen in the cinema. Margot feels so uncomfortable that her imagination conjures up a doppelganger who stands at the side of the bed asking her just why she is doing this. From this moment on, Margot tries to extract herself from the relationship, while letting Robert down lightly. But, like his hero Harrison, he’s not taking “No” for an answer.

Robert’s preferred music for fucking is Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. You know, the song with the lyric: “Can’t you understand Oh, my little girl ”. This, together with text messages that he has sent earlier like “I’ll take care of u”, should be enough to show that we may have a problem here. Robert is over a decade older than Margot, and is obviously trying to infantilise her, even though she seems to be more mature and sophisticated than him in many ways.

The short story on which Cat Person is based ends with the word “Whore!” When Robert finds out that Margot doesn’t want to see him any more, he reacts with sexist abuse. The “nice guy” who Margot has been trying not to disappoint reacts to rejection with misogynist ire. We see that sexism is not the sole province of rapists and wife beaters – the imbalance of power between men and women means that women cannot expect equal treatment even from less threatening guys.

Or, in the words of the Margaret Atwood quote which pops up at the beginning of the film “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” From the very start, Margot’s relationship with Robert has been based on an unequal power dynamic – she serves him with a smile from the cinema concessions stand and is unable to properly react to his rudeness without losing her job. She is a younger woman in a society which privileges older men.

The “whore” scene is about two-thirds of the way through the film. From this moment on, in a plot which was invented by the film makers, it seems to be arguing something else entirely. In the short story, it doesn’t matter whether or not Robert is actually dangerous – Margot’s fear is both real and justified. Although they both enter the relationship with naive clumsiness, Margot must pay a much greater price if everything goes all wrong.

Maybe I need to put my cards on the table. Although some reviewers assume that “everyone” read Kristen Roupenian’s “inescapable” New Yorker short story on which the film is based, I am just not part of that bubble. Nonetheless, the article has an interesting history, being published 2 months after the same magazine revealed the abusive explots of Harvey Weinstein, giving birth to the #MeToo movement.

Watching the film makes me want to go and read the story, not least because the final third of the film undermines its own message. Ambiguity is discarded – we learn for real whether Robert is a real threat to Margot, and even whether he actually owns a cat. I guess the aim is to highlight the film’s feminist message, but the effect is the reverse. Rather than pointing out the perceived danger women feel from yesallmen, it becomes a story of the sins of a particular individual.

This is a shame, as Cat People is a very enjoyable film – much wittier than we have any right to expect from a “message” film. It is a breath of fresh air to watch a romantic film shown almost entirely from the woman’s point of view, one which articulates the real fears with which women enter relationships. Background events, like Margot calling a friend as she approaches a darkened street, just add to this atmosphere.

Cat People subverts the romcom genre, and we need much more than that. I just which it had the courage of its convictions and didn’t feel the need to add action scenes towards the end, when its strength lies in its calm depiction of real social relationships.