Cat Person movie review: her too

I remembering reading that New Yorker story a few years back, the one that went viral like a short story hadn’t done before in the Internet era: Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person.” (You can still read it online.) I was surprised that people were so shocked and provoked by it, because it describes a pretty straightforward, unembellished experience of being a woman, especially a very young woman, in the heterosexual dating realm. Except it was a perspective that hadn’t gotten mainstream exposure before, so even women who weren’t astonished by what the story had to say could be astonished that it was being said, and — incredibly — being heard.

That same power of untold ordinariness fuels this new film adaptation. Here are bald, almost too-obvious truths about how women navigate romantic and sexual relationships with men: with great trepidation and with full awareness of the immense danger we are putting ourselves in… dangers that aren’t always physical (though too often they are) but far more frequently of the soul-crushingly existential variety, as it is confirmed, to our dismay, that many men simply do not recognize that women, particularly women they are attracted to, are individual human people who belong to our own selves, not to them. #NotAllMen, naturally, but enough of them, and with no way to distinguish between them initially, that a gal has no choice but to be on guard.

These are truths that pop culture has all but ignored: Roupenian’s story came along just as #MeToo revelations were resounding across society, as experiences that women have long shared among ourselves suddenly got a bullhorn. Now this movie does a similar job. Movies about awkward hetero relationships invariably center inept men and their feelings, and invite us to empathize with them, feel sorry for them, without ever really asking what they have to offer the women they’re crushing on, without ever asking why their crushes should be interested in them, without ever asking how they can become better potential friends and partners. (And to preempt the inevitable tiresome assumptions by male readers about what I am saying here: I am not talking about how much money a man makes or what kind of car he drives. I’m talking about what kind of human being he is: is he compassionate, curious, engaged with the world?) Cat Person shows us a woman’s side of that dynamic, at last… just as its young female protagonist is discovering it for herself.

Cat Person opens with that Margaret Atwood quote that I sometimes fear has become cliché, until I realize (again) that nowhere near enough people of all genders have heard it and recognized the terrible authenticity of it: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Cat Person is that in a nutshell, and that’s a good thing. The press releases I got regarding this movie call it “genre-bending,” which I guess is because it kinda has a slight veneer of horror fantasy to it, sprinkled with a touch of black comedy. But that’s just unvarnished reality to women: we walk through the world fully aware of how hostile it is to us, and often try to downplay that with dark humor. Yes, we “joke” with our female friends that we’re sharing a male date’s contact info in case we turn up dead the next morning. But we’re deadly serious about that, too (and we do share his contact info). Our lives are bleakly comedic dark fantasias.

So, sorry, but Cat Person is a straight-up slice-of-life drama.

Here we meet college student Margot (Emilia Jones: High-Rise, Doctor Who) as she perfunctorily “flirts” with a male patron of the movie-theater concession stand she works. It is but the first of the fine lines women are expected to walk with men, particularly in situations where men have the upper hand, such as in customer service, where a woman being friendly and “nice” is absolutely a requirement yet is often misinterpreted by men as something more personal. The patron is Robert (Nicholas Braun: Zola, How to Be Single): “tall, dark, and problematic” as Margot’s friend Taylor (the brilliant Geraldine Viswanathan [Bad Education, Blockers], sadly underused here) astutely pegs him. He thinks he’s suave, but he’s wretchedly unsmooth: “Listen, concession-stand girl,” he says upon a subsequent customer-service encounter, “why don’t you give me your number?” Ugh.

But she gives him a chance, as so many men insist is something women should do, and agrees to go out with him. It doesn’t go well, but Margot has been enjoying his banter in their texts and is hoping he’s gonna prove himself to be more fun and engaging in person than he has so far turned out to be. She likes the idea of him… or, at least, some of the ideas of him her imagination has been whipping up around him. She gives him so many chances until she finally has to concede that he’s not the not-unreasonable baseline she was expecting and that they’re not gonna work… at which point he turns nasty. I guess all those men who want all those chances imagine that those chances will never go sour, that women who give them a chance will inevitably be irresistibly swept off their feet? Once a woman gives a guy that chance, there’s no backing out for her?

The cringe of modern relationships is the stink all over Cat Person. This isn’t a fun movie, and it’s far from perfect: it’s too long, for one; director Susanna Fogel’s handling of the semi-thriller bits feel hamfistedly shoehorned in and probably could have been excised to solve that issue. But it’s an important movie for how it begins to counterbalance hetero men’s ideas of romance that have overwhelmingly dominated movies for decades. It’s right here on the screen! Robert tells Margot that The Empire Strikes Back was “the first romantic movie I ever saw.” He probably imagines himself a charming scoundrel like Han Solo. He’s not.

In case I have not been clear: Cat Person is an antiromance. There is nothing romantic about it, not in any sense of the word. It features the least sexy first kiss ever, and a mortifying sex scene. It’s about a woman who realizes she isn’t clicking with a problematic man but that the best way for her to extricate herself is to manage his assholishness until she can escape. She’s so much younger than him — 20 to his 34! — and in many ways she’s still a kid. Yet she has no choice but to grow up and figure this out while he gets to coast on his juvenile delusions and then blame her for his inadequacies.

This is a cautionary tale for young women. “Get used to some discomfort” when dealing with men, Margot’s mother (another brilliant actor underutilized here, Hope Davis: Greenland, Captain America: Civil War) advises her. That’s Cat Person’s warning. It’s a dismal one, and a necessary one. It’s one I’m sorry women have to learn, and one that I hope men can start understanding. To those men I’d say: Please just watch this, and pay attention.

more films like this:
• Promising Young Woman [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV]
• An Education [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK | Hulu US | Disney+ UK]