Cat Person (2023), by Susanna Fogel
THIS ARTICLE HAS SPOILERS
Starting with a Margaret Atwood quotation — “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them” — the film “Cat Person” lets us know that it is NOT a romantic comedy. It is, actually, a meditation about the dangers of dating as a young woman living in a world crossed by the third wave of feminism.
Margot (Emilia Jones) is a college student who works selling popcorn at a movie theater. She starts texting one of the usual customers, Robert (Nicholas Braun), and then hangs out with him and has sex with him before dumping him. The problem with the break-up is that he knows where she lives and works, which makes Margot paranoid.
When Margot looks for the police because Robert seems to be stalking her, the female police offer says that he hasn’t broken the law waiting outside the movie theater. This is the perfect example why Robert lies when he later says “everybody believes the woman”.
While on college break, Margot heads back home and ends up singing — complete with a highly sexualized choreography — “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in her stepfather’s birthday party. This happens after her mom tells her that things have changed only in the surface since Marilyn Monroe sang the song on film — that happened in the movie “Let’s Make Love”, from 1960. It’s also back home, after the party, that Margot learns that her former boyfriend has came out as asexual. This interlude of home life doesn’t exist in the original short story.
Margot’s best friend Taylor (Geraldine Viswanathan) has a feminist forum. She believes her co-moderator, “Lady Talk”, is actually a guy in disguise, because said moderator started a topic telling that the majority of women — 76% to be exact — enjoy receiving dick pics. It’s Taylor who helps Margot dump Robert via text message, and it’s while hanging with Taylor that Margot receives a cascade of texts from Robert, ending up with him calling her “whore”.
It’s painful — and painfully real — to watch the sex scene, in which Margot argues with herself about what if she doesn’t want to do it anymore, a legit fear that certainly has crossed the minds of many young women and started an internal monologue about consent. This scene reminded me of a song in another feminist work, the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”. The song “Sex with a Stranger” has the following lyrics, that translate Margot’s feelings:
“Hey sexy stranger
Come back to my place
And I hope you’re not a murderer
Kiss me baby, all over the place
And please don’t be a murderer
[…]
Hey, sexy stranger, let’s go to my place
And please don’t harvest my kidney
Don’t give me that incredulous face
I saw a movie like that on Lifetime”
Isabella Rossellini appears briefly as Margot’s teacher who takes care of an ant colony. When Robert destroys the colony as he breaks a door that was stuck, the queen ant dies, even though all the females from the colony had tried to save her. Sorority in the animal kingdom is later mirrored with humans, as Taylor, despite having argued with Margot, goes after her in the climax. The teacher also doesn’t exist in the original short story.
I wasn’t familiar with the short story by Kristen Roupenian that was the basis for the film, and after watching the movie I decided to read it at The New Yorker magazine. I must say that the short story has a better ending, as it ends on a high note that corroborates with what Margot feared — that all men are trash — while the movie creates a climax that ends up putting Robert in a better light.
The short story created a frisson when it was published in 2017. Many people celebrated it as a real portrait of how young women are navigating the world of dating with so much technology involved, while others criticized its unlikeable female protagonist. It was said that, again and again, short stories about men are deemed important and even universal, while the ones about women, especially younger women, are deemed as minor works in the literary field. I must say that the adaptation was faithful up until the climax, when the choices made me like the short story better than the movie.
Lead Emilia Jones has described “Cat Person” as “a meditation on the miscommunications, the power dynamics and the interiority of dating.” Director Susanna Fogel said that she “used elements of psychological thriller to study all the mixed messages women get about men”. A thriller about dating in the 21st century, but with moments of humor, “Cat Person” is sure to replicate, although probably in a smaller scale, the conversation that has started with the short story.
