Cat Person: A miscalculation of epic proportions. ⭐

By Rob Ryan

Here we have the most frustrating movie of the year. A movie where all rationality, common sense and an inkling of forethought are completely absent, if there was anyone making a reasonable decision, this movie would be over much much sooner than expected, which I guess makes sense when you factor in that this movie was based on a short story.

But I am getting ahead of myself, Cat Person is based on a short story written by Kristen Roupenian, published in The New Yorker in 2017 and proved to be very popular. The story is as follows, a young college sophomore named Margot meets an older guy named Robert, and despite the decade-long age difference they seem to get along very well, mostly bonding through text rather than human interaction, that is until one day they finally have sex and it proves to be a disaster. When she tries to break it off through text, he doesn't take it well and starts to constantly text her before finally calling her a "whore". How this story continues is left up to you but I'd like to think that it was nothing more than a bad experience that could vaguely resemble someone else's, Not a whole lot of material you can make a feature film off but director Sussana Fogel and screenwriter Michelle Ashford somehow manage to make a film that surpasses even below those already low standards.

Margot (Emilia Jones) meets Robert (Nicholas Braun) at her shift in a cinema that mostly does reruns of old classics, one day during their second encounter, he decides to leave her his number and the two start getting along. It's only when they actually meet in person more do the conversations become more awkward and the cracks in their relationship begin to show. He's a massive fan of Harrison Ford and Star Wars and she's a fan of Studio Ghibli. His style of romance represents a somewhat old-school approach as opposed to what people Margot's age are used to and that's not even accounting for Margot's paranoid delusions of Robert choking her to death.

As you might've worked out this all culminates in Margot having sex with Robert, regretting it and ending the relationship with him and....Well, you know the rest. I won't go into any detail about how the filmmakers chose to continue with this aspect of the story but all I'll say is that any theory, any scenario, any idea you might have about how this all could be resolved rationally, responsibly or even effectively from a narrative standpoint, you might as well throw all those ideas out the window as I guarantee it will be nowhere near, as ludicrous, contrived and nonsensical as what the filmmakers have come up with as the only way this story would ever come to this conclusion is as if the filmmakers have never interacted with a human being or have any understanding how modern relationships work or breaking up in general works

There's no way I can say this without sounding victim blamey but here goes...Margot is a complete idiot! Who despite having some level of agency, is completely incapable of making an okay decision when it comes to her dating life and it's a quality that the filmmakers (and author) don't seem to be aware of. It's never fully clear why she continues to hang out with this man despite having so many fantasies about him violently choking her to death. Does her wanting to have sex with Robert stem from immense peer pressure to do it? if so why is it then revealed to us that this isn't the first time that she's done it? What was different about those experiences that don't match this? Is it because it's an older man this time? What was about this experience that you were expecting compared to your previous relationships? None of these conflicting feelings are given a chance to be explored in any real detail.

There are simple logistical steps the filmmakers could have taken to work around to make her a more sympathetic person. What if her desire for Robert is not out of peer pressure, but out of a self-interested feeling of being loved especially by someone older and seemingly wiser, someone that makes you feel more worthy of being happy instead of hearing it from your parents or other kids the same age as you. These desires can be inflicted by an imbalance in the power dynamic as well as manipulation of course but it can also be a desire driven by ego rather than a genuine feeling of affection for the opposite sex.

Alternatively what if Margot feels left out and wants a happy ending of her own, a movie I watched recently named "How to Have Sex" (not out in cinemas until November 3) greatly explored how people especially young girls have this immense pressure to have sex and how external forces such as a shitty friend group and a lack of respect for yourself and your own autonomy can lead to a regrettable experience, what if Margot feels the same way instead already having this self-confidence embedded in her.

All these ideas and more are interesting but Cat Person never uses any of these, instead, its approach to the subject matter is not only confused and cynical but it is also immensely one-sided as we don't ever get to experience this from Robert's point of view. If Cat Person wanted to have an in-depth look at the world of modern dating and the interactions and dynamics that come with it then I feel it should've been an equal approach to the relationships instead of solely focusing on Margot while not excusing some of Robert's worst qualities, one of them being choosing to have a relationship with a much younger person which this movie doesn't have a whole lot to say about either. It's why I am only ever talking about Margot in this case as not only is Robert underdeveloped and incredibly stereotyped, but the movie seems to be under the impression that the relationship and its failings are mostly his doing all the while never acknowledging Margot's faults and how she doesn't seem to be fully aware of what she wants.

Have I also addressed how incredibly paranoid Margot is? Even before the movie's bizarre genre twist in the third act, any time she interacts with Robert physically she always has fantasies about being violently murdered by him, and after he calls her a whore through text, her paranoia goes up to 11 and she begins making the situation ten times worse, that's not to say her concerns are somewhat valid as women being killed by their exes does happen, but Margot is the only one that escalates things to a worse degree due to her paranoia getting the better of her. If this was something that the movie played with, where you are not sure if she's deluded or not, only to find out that she has these unshakeable fears that allow her to take Margret Atwood's quote shown in the opening seriously ("Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them" bit reductive but ok) then that would at least be more interesting instead of that ridiculous excuse of a climax.

Even removing all these frustrations expressed, the pacing is incredibly slow, as if the filmmakers are aware this story is incredibly thin and they need to fill time. Margot goes home to her family for a bit before coming back for what feels like 10 minutes and the rest of the cast have no bearing on the plot and narrative other than to reinforce the point home that the patriarchy is alive and well, Hope Davis shows up as Margot's mother just to be prudish and to perform a sexually charged song for her husband alongside her daughter, Isabella Rossellini is wasted as Margots' Myrmecology teacher who is just there to talk about how "the male ants can't survive without the queens blah blah blah" very subtle, and there's also a bit part by Youtube sensation Liza Koshy just cause......

But the most insufferable character (and that's saying a lot) is Margot's best friend Taylor (Geraldine Viswanathan) who is this movie's idea of a "Woke feminist" who is always on the move to call out men breathing. For a movie that is supposedly feminist, I doubt the filmmakers have ever interacted with anyone who this character is supposed to represent. Not helped by the fact that Margot's paranoia around Robert seems to stem from Taylor coming to the worse conclusions about him even before his worse tendencies become apparent. She seems to have it out for men as if they are the enemy and when she gets called out on her self-righteousness, it's never brought up again and the character is never given any room to have her beliefs challenged.

Cat Person not only has outdated ideas about men and women but has no idea what it wants to be or what it wants to say. I can't for the life of me tell you what the message or the point was supposed to be, If I had to come up with an answer it would probably be to ask whoever it is your dating questions, something that neither party ever did throughout this entire movie, such as "what do you do for work?, "what are your interests other than movies?" "where did you grow up and what was your childhood?" And most damming of all "How old are you? "Either one of these could have potentially ended this catastrophe of a relationship much sooner.

I guess I can conclude this by recommending a better movie. How to Have Sex was a movie I saw at a preview this week and it's out November 3rd in the UK.

Cat Person is out in UK cinemas now.