O Gato

To make a review short, the acting by Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret is nothing short of fantastic. The film is a downer but it's worth watching. There's something in French cinema that's unique. It often creates towering, almost mythical characters through mundane situations. The two actors make anyone from Hollywood look amateurish.

The kind of film which can leave no one ice cold. It is impossible not to feel anything, not to weep in front such a story. Poignant, gripping, painful, so realistic and close to reality of millions of couples all over the world. A tale about old age, not very old though, but more than mature anyway. Terrific performances pulled by two giants of the French movie industry: Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret. Many folks may feel empathy for both of the characters, feel so close to them, to their tragedy. A movie about loneliness and the loss of love but maybe not tenderness. A film about regret of lost happiness. Two people who spent their whole life together and who suddenly get bitter, only thru a cat issue. You could spend hours analysing this awesome story, but so gloomy, sad, moving. One of Pierre Granier Deferre's best, with LE TRAIN and LA VEUVE COUDERC. In terms of couple feud about a pet - among many oter things - it's the smoother version of WAR OF THE ROSES.

This started as a Georges Simenon story, and is typically brutal about human relationships. I like it so because of the performances of Gabin & Signoret - they were as good as you can get, and here are at the top of their powers. Either of them would have blown anybody else I can think of off the screen. Excellent, if very French.

Made fifty years apart, "Le chat" and Michael Haneke's "Amour" (2012) are bookend films, in my view. Both depict the various ways love continues to insert/assert itself in a couple's life, even when one's health is deteriorating.

Simone Signoret and Jean Gabin convey the emotional turmoil that cleaves their marriage with as little dialogue as possible. Cooped up in the house once filled with their love, they now have to confront the painful disintegration of the passion that animated their younger selves. The world around them is literally crumbling (an obvious metaphor of their marriage), but they persist in spite of it all. A master class of acting!

A derelict neighbourhood is becoming gentrified. An unwanted house is becoming demolished. A claustrophobic marriage is becoming dissolved. Absorb the depressing mood: script, score, silence. A superior film.