Cat Call

When you’ve experienced a certain amount of loss, it can be hard to invest in new relationships. Since the emergence of Covid, this is something that many more people will relate to. For architect Fáni (Franciska Töröcsik), who lost her father at an early age, the merest thought of hooking up with an attractive man leads her to experience a lurid vision of his death. Is this something supernatural or simply psychological? It doesn’t really matter. It still makes her far too uncomfortable to embark on a relationship, much to the concern of her influencer best friend Zsanett (Adél Csobot) and her older female relatives.

Bright-eyed and perky, albeit slightly clumsy and prone to bouts of foolishness, Fáni is not a woman who struggles to get male attention. When her new co-worker also turns out to be her new neighbour, it seems that fate may be conspiring to make her change her ways – but then somebody unexpected comes into her life, and everything changes. He’s cool, he’s confident, he’s undeniably handsome, and for the first time, she doesn’t find herself plagued by visions of him losing his life. Perhaps because he’s got nine of them. He’s a cat.

Rozália Szeleczki’s film, which screened as part of Fantaspoa 2024, uses the lightly surrealist tropes of the romcom from the outset, thereby assuring us that we don’t need to think about the awkward ethical issues here any more than we need to worry about the concept of a talking cat (though of course we never really know if this is reality or mental illness either). The first time the couple wake up together, the cat reassures our heroine that nothing happened – he wouldn’t take advantage.

Indeed, his behaviour towards her is such that it’s easy to see why she accepts him as the perfect gentleman, though some viewers will be quick to spot warning signs. He’s very good at putting her off potential rivals, at socially isolating her (despite others’ efforts to be open-minded) and at making her feel like a moral failure if she doesn’t do what he wants. In other words, he engages in typical feline behaviour, but it’s also behaviour that far too many people are persuaded to put up with from their romantic partners.

These darker aspects of the film are balanced out by quirky humour and the fact that most people Fáni meets, clearly under the impression that she’s having a breakdown, try to bear with her or provide gentle course corrections where they can. It’s a film full of small acts of kindness, a film in which it’s possible to make mistakes and keep on going, and in which the audience is therefore at liberty to be entertained by a series of scrapes which might otherwise be mortifying. Szeleczki proves adept at controlling the tone. Potentially excruciating sequences such as the cat trying to launch a career in gangsta rap are just absurd enough to be both funny and sympathetic.

Whilst the ending feels somewhat rushed, that’s hardly uncommon in the genre. If you like romcoms generally and are not put off by quirkiness, this should easily hit the spot. There are also many moments that will hit close to home for cat owners, and Szeleczki’s world building is very effective, creating a space in which the possibility of the supernatural, whether or not we accept it as supernatural, expands dramatic horizons. It’s a refreshingly light and airy fantasy, whether or not it’s the sort of thing you’d want to take home.