Review of Suzanne Vogel’s film “Cat and Mouse”

Suzanne Vogel’s film Cat Person, a film adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s acclaimed 2017 story, has been released. When transferred to the screen, an everyday sketch about gender relations turned into a real thriller, which did not benefit the picture at all, he believes Julia Shagelman.

Kristen Roupenian’s story “The Cat Man” (that’s the name of the film in the original, although the Russian title for once better reflects what is happening not in the text, but on the screen) was published in The New Yorker magazine in 2017 and unexpectedly became a sensation . Not even literary, but rather social: the short text so accurately captured the social changes taking place in the wake of the #MeToo movement that it caused not only heated discussions on social networks, but also new texts that, in turn, analyzed this one. The “gray zone” in relationships, the boundaries of consent and coercion, women’s and men’s fears – all this, as if in a drop of water, was reflected in the simple story of one unsuccessful date, during which no one seemed to be physically harmed, but morally everyone was deeply dissatisfied .

As usual, Roupenian received her fifteen minutes of fame, a contract for a collection of short stories (no other text in this book made such an impression on readers as “The Cat Person”) and a film script (as a result, in the credits of the film “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies” ( 2022) she remained only as the author of the story, and the script itself was completely rewritten by another person), as well as a proposal for a film adaptation of “Catman”. It also turned out to be “based on”, and the author of the script here is Michelle Ashford, who, like director Suzanne Vogel, worked mainly on TV series. The film had to get to its premiere for six whole years, which is an eternity for the generation of Reddit and Twitter, so the potential audience managed to forget what made them stay up at night and be distracted from work, proving to strangers on the Internet that they were wrong.

It would seem, how is it even possible to turn a modest 7 thousand characters into a full-length film? Alas, after watching it, the answer turns out to be discouragingly simple – no way. The main plot outline of the story in “Cat and Mouse” has been preserved: student Margo (Emilia Jones), working part-time in a cinema buffet, meets an older man named Robert (Nicholas Brown) at work; after several attempts at awkward flirting, he finally gets her phone number, and a correspondence begins between them, during which both become even more attractive to each other; then he asks her out on a date during which everything goes wrong (wrong movie to watch together, wrong place to get a drink); nevertheless, the date ends with sex – it’s not that Margot really wants to, but it’s already somehow inconvenient to refuse. The sex turns out to be absolutely terrible, and now Margot faces the problem of how to get rid of Robert in such a way as not to offend him, but also not to anger him.

To put some meat on those bones, Ashford and Vogel expand Margot’s world. She has a best friend – a caricaturedly passionate feminist who speaks exclusively in slogans (Geraldine Viswanathan); a teacher making speeches about gender hierarchy in the world of ants (it’s unclear what Isabella Rossellini forgot here); dorm neighbors; friends and parents. None of them, however, become full-fledged characters, acting only as a mouthpiece for the author’s ideas.

In addition, the creators slightly deceive the audience – and for those who have not read “Catman”, this technique may even work – by intonation presenting the story as a thriller. This is supported by lighting, sounds, disturbing music behind the scenes, as well as the visualization of Margot’s thoughts, who always imagines that the weakling Robert may turn out to be a maniacal rapist and murderer. But when in the third act these fantasies suddenly begin to come true, it only causes disappointment.

This is the main problem of the film: everything that remained subtext in the story (what girl doesn’t know the feeling of vague anxiety when you are left alone with a stranger, even the nicest one), is brought to the surface here and repeatedly voiced in every way. And the main idea is simply written on the screen in the first minute of the running time, with an epigraph from Margaret Atwood: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Actually, after this we could have parted ways, but for some reason the film spends another two hours looking for more and more new confirmation.