Cat Person

I saw this as part of an Odeon Screen unseen showing so was completely and literally in the dark about what I was going to see. Well I was pleasantly surprised. It's a tale about 20 year old Margot and her bouncing around the excitement and misunderstandings of relationships and how communication, expectation and reality can all blow things up.

There were times whenn I expected the story to go down a sinister route but then was I being manipulated by the opening quote?

Worth your time. This is just a privileged view into a 20 year Old's life which reverberated with me on many levels. If you approach this as just that then you won't be disappointed.

College student Margot meets and flirts with a guy a few years older than her at her place of work, a cinema. The pair soon start a deep connection, via text, but reality doesn't quite match up to fantasy.

There are several meanings of the term cat person, one meaning I wasn't aware of, someone who can't differentiate between real life sex and porn.

First of all, getting to see this film proved to be something of a challenge, I had to travel over an hour, as it was never shown locally, a real shame, this film is well worth seeing.

Very intriguing, suspenseful, and pretty original, I can't think of many films like it. It's a film of two halves, there's comes a point where there's a real switch up, it goes up several gears.

Now, most of the reviews I've read follow the same sort of view, poor Margot, terrible and predatory man, I'd just like to give a different view point.

First off, Margot made most of the running, bombarding Robert with promises, without even truly knowing him, she got what she thought she wanted out if him, then discarded him when she got bored, maybe it's a generational thing.

The film doesn't actually make out that Robert is the guilty party, there's one scene in particularly where Margot realises, she got it wrong.

Had something happened to Margot in her past? Was she reliving a past trauma through him?

Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun are both excellent, and credit for his casting, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but he's not a muscular jock or a male model, he's a good looking guy next door, it made the story all the more believable.

That music, fire! So many great tunes, years since I last heard Sophie B. Hawkins.

Is it a film about consent, life choices, or using people? You decide.

Excellent, 8/10.

Romance, both sides seek it, but often there are very different ideas about what that means.

The movie explores pitfalls of idealisation of the other person, placing looks above genuine connection and feelings as well as double standards and jumping to conclusions without trying to deeply understand another person.

It is also accurately portrayed how people read more into text messages than the sender intends both positively and other times negatively perceiving a neutral or opposite intent, or just making it wildly colourful.

Although the characters are somewhat stereotypical and extreme the situations are not far from everyday life, so they are relatable.

We are given a relatively good background on why Margot is seeking an older partner and why she goas along with uncomfortable situations.

The movie is primarily told from the female perspective, but it balances it with some insights into quirky male motives and true intentions.

I (as a male) did not feel that the feminist agenda was pushed too far, the reviews which claim that this is a movie just to blame males is highly inaccurate.

There is a glimpse into a therapy session and obviously both characters struggle with deep unresolved mental health issues, which ultimately helps to fuel the escalation of violence.

Overall its an enjoyable movie and I did not find it too predictable and I certainly did not expect it to answer all the questions it posed. I also did not expect to side with one character or the other like another review says, you do not always have to take sides.

There are some metaphors in the movie and some of the scenes are just portrays of imagination which could have been connected a bit more smoothly.

It would have been nice to add a more neutral external perspective like the therapy session on top of the two extreme sides with the occasional grounding (though biased) view of the friend.

It would have also helped to better understand the male character by providing a similar family background story to the female character.

I went into this movie expecting this crime story with a huge plot twist and it wasn't even close. I wasn't exactly disappointed though because I actually enjoyed most of the movie. It was just the ending that let it down for me.

So the first half of the movie I totally understand.. as a female who dated for years before settling down I found myself laughing at the awkward situations the movie reminded me of. There is this fear, stress and complete awkwardness to modern dating. The movie captured that spot on. I can't speak for other women but I found myself relating completely to both of the main characters.

When it got to the end though I felt like there was just this desperation to make the movie end on a shocking note but it just didn't fit the rest of the movie. Id of rated it higher if they went their separate ways and learn from the mistakes they made.

(P. S Robert was definitely on the spectrum and Margot's super "woke" best friend really annoyed me.)

I wasn't a fan of director Susanna Fogel's work on Booksmart which she wrote, and the Spy Who Dumped Me which she also directed but this film shows impressive progress in her skill-set.

To the reviewers that got upset because they thought this film was anti men, the film was not anti men. It showed what the female characters feared, not what was real. It showed how the situation was partly of their own making, from their expectations and prejudices, as well as what the guy brought to it. It didn't judge but it left it open for us to do it.

The film was masterfully and tightly directed, lots of detail, subtlety and thought provoking scenes. It avoids black and whiting the complexity of where western society has taken itself in establishing relationships with other humans. The message was pretty bleak but we get insight into why it got that way, and there isn't really any finger pointing and blame attributing, (although it appears to side with the female lead it doesn't let her off the hook at all and the ending leaves it very open) as we do get a reasonably balanced understanding of the failings of all parties.

The direction was just really well done, and supported by insightful and nuanced performances from the cast, especially Emilia Jones who goes in the deep end after her stint in the Lock and Key series which she was also good in, & her award winning role in CODA, but this is next level.

There are many disturbing social observations in this film and it's great to have a movie made that dares to drift from the cartoon guns and violence fare we normally get. The film doesn't really deliver answers but it certainly identifies some of the problems.

I'm still thinking about the implications well after viewing it.