Michael Pinkney (playing himself) is a man struggling with his lower income lifestyle in the shadow of the film industry. His job is degrading, his home is infested with rats and his mind constantly wanders into a lo-fi dreamscape that mirrors his analog video experiments.
"She's Allergic to Cats" comes to us from writer-director Michael Reich, who previously co-directed "Video Town" with star Pinkney. We also have Sonja Kinski ("Holidays") as the romantic lead, as much as this film can be said to have much romance. The name that actually jumped out at me, though, was executive producer Andrew van den Houten. As a huge fan of his film "Headspace", I was excited to see something he was attached to.
Trying to describe this film is a bit of a challenge. On some levels, it is pretty straightforward – a pet groomer who meets a young woman and is trying to advance his relationship with her. But the overall weirdness permeates the film. Situations abound concerning rats, bananas, rats that eat bananas, and close-up shots of dogs getting their genitals washed. Other situations are normal except that the people involved could be fresh out of Richard Linklater's "Slacker", such as a man who only watches movies with talking animals.
"Cats" made the rounds at Fantasia in 2016, receiving mixed-to-positive reviews. I missed it at that time, but luckily was able to catch it at the 2017 Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF). Although this is a hard film to market, and probably has no wide-release potential, it should not be easily disregarded. The video experiments alone show a strong skill and artistic vision utilizing the VHS aesthetic, something that has been coming back lately with "Lake Nowhere" and the folks at Everything is Terrible. In fact, if plans do not already exist to do so, this seems like the sort of film that would be perfect to release on VHS rather than DVD
if only they still made VCRs to play it.
