cat person — the film adaptation of the New Yorker short story that hijacked your Twitter feed in December 2017 — opens with a now-familiar paraphrase of a Margaret Atwood quote. sentences. “Women fear men will kill them.”
The crowd laughed nervously when the words appeared cat person‘s Sundance premiere. This is a solid Plessis of cinema that chronicles the doomed relationship between 20-year-old Margot (Emilia Jones) and a very tall man named Robert (Nicholas Braun). They meet at the movie theater where she works behind the concession stand. They have a lively and thrilling text message relationship, followed by a much less stimulating in-person relationship, and everything heads south.
the movie is good. Director Susanna Vogel adds secondary characters (such as her best friend Tamara, played by the always-amazing Geraldine Viswanathan), deftly unfolds dream sequences, and portrays Margot’s writhing experiences with visceral accuracy. deftly pushes Margot’s inner story into the visual medium by rendering it in . But there’s an added third act that breaks the ambiguity of the original story. In the short story, as you would at the end of such a relationship, many questions are left open.
Still, I mostly enjoyed it. And Atwood’s paraphrasing kept stirring in the back of my mind as I started checking out the other movies I had just seen at Sundance. There is a certain type of “good guy” who bursts into white-hot rage when his ego is hurt, in other words, when he suspects a woman is laughing at him. Led Hollywood didn’t always seem possible. This Sundance proves it.
of cat person, for example, Margot finds herself desperate not to assert her distaste for having sex with Robert, telling herself it’s easier to go through with it. He’s bigger than her, and she’s much more worried about putting herself in danger. She’s not afraid to be a deranged serial killer. ing.
Margot’s feelings fair play, another of the most talked about films at the festival, is a relationship drama inspired by the outlines of old-school erotic thrillers, if not really true. (Netflix got the movie for $20 million, so you’ll be able to watch it soon. You’ll have to hide your relationship at work. But when she gets a promotion above him, things go from bad to worse.) .
fair play Acerbic and charming, but mostly a film that makes you grimace in recognition. Luke knows that others laugh at him, that his life is on the verge of being overthrown, which he desperately believes he deserves to lead, and that Emily worships him. but put him in a different lens.
What emerges in fair play -and cat person, for that matter, it doesn’t matter which woman they’re dating for these men who pride themselves on being a ‘good guy’. We accept and support These men believe they deserve something (a woman, a job, a very specific type of respect) simply for existing. Plunge into verbal and physical violence just by smelling the opposite.
You’ve probably never encountered this before. You may not have experienced it first hand. But I assure you someone you love has. What both films manage to do, and what is difficult for other media, is to drag the viewer into the female mental space… man, and there will be consequences.
Both films are more about the world around them than the individual characters.It’s a world that nurtures men like Luke and Robert, making them make promises they can’t keep, and giving them an unspoken license to strike out when they don’t get what they want. justicea documentary by Doug Lyman about the allegations against current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and what the women who accused him endured when they brought their stories into the public eye.
justice It primarily focuses on Deborah Ramirez, who claims to have been grotesquely harassed by Kavanaugh as a Yale student. We revisit and talk about the aftermath of the accusations.Cut together with Christine Blasey Ford’s congressional testimony and Kavanaugh’s own hearings before approval, it’s a pretty brutal movie to watch.
But what stands out in line with films like cat person When fair play On-screen, the intensity read as almost inexplicably explosive, a claim Kavanaugh denied. his anger. He fails to display the cold humility expected of someone on the country’s Supreme Court. The little lie he told for no reason, the film establishes with its journalistic rigor. His ferocious, red-hot anger.
It’s like watching Luke or Robert explode at Emily or Margot. Not quite proportionate to what they are exploding. It is the wrath of someone trampled, the silly, swirling panic of a child deprived of a toy. You can’t get a good, comfortable feeling out of one of these movies. They are a testament to the broken world we live in and how far we have to go.
fair play, cat personWhen justice Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. cat person Distributed by Netflix. fair play When justice Currently waiting for distribution.