The Michigan Daily loves to watch and talk about films at the cutting edge of storytelling and there is no place better to do so than the Sundance Film Festival. After a two-year in-person hiatus, writers and editors for the Film Beat have trudged through the snow on planes, trains and automobiles to arrive at Park City, Utah. Our coverage will include the premiers of dramas, romances, documentaries and everything in between. Welcome to our discussion on films made with Oscar winners and first-time filmmakers alike.
Kristen Roupenian, author of “Cat Person,” one of the only (if not the only) short stories to ever go viral, admitted at a Sundance press line on Saturday, Jan. 21 that she had been unsure how someone could adapt it to film.
“So much of it is an internal monologue,” Roupenian said. Everything in the story is seen through 20-year-old Margot’s eyes as she starts a short-lived relationship with 34-year-old Robert. Her perceptions of Robert and their interactions change wildly — she first thinks he’s attractive and later describes him as a “fat old man.” She is alternately afraid of how little she knows about him and endeared because of the power she holds over him.
Susanna Fogel’s (“The Spy Who Dumped Me”) movie adaptation proves that Roupenian was correct to wonder how the story would work as a film.
Margot’s internal monologue is externalized in additional conversations with other characters, scenes taking place in Margot’s imagination and one conversation between Margot (Emilia Jones, “CODA”) and herself in which she questions why she is having sex with Robert (Nicholas Braun, “Succession”) when she doesn’t really want to.
The externalization of inner thoughts works occasionally. Midway through their first date, which takes up most of the run time, Margot and Robert stand outside a movie theater awkwardly because Margot didn’t enjoy the movie. Robert asks if she wants to get a drink, and when she is unenthusiastic, he gets upset and passive-aggressive. We cut to a scene from Margot’s imagination: Robert sits in a therapist’s office, confessing that he is acting this way because Margot is so beautiful and intimidating and he is afraid to be vulnerable. After imagining this, Margot’s enthusiasm for their date comes rushing back. This scene is a creative and effective way of showing the mental mind games Margot played with herself in Roupenian’s story.
The subsequent therapist scenes take that initial creativity and stomp it out by over-explaining the points it tries to make — an issue that afflicts the whole script.
“Cat Person” isn’t a story the creators wanted to get wrong. What makes the source material interesting are the questions it raises: Was it fair of Margot to act more interested in Robert than she was? Was it fair of Robert to go along with it without revealing how much older he was? Should Robert have realized Margot didn’t want to have sex with him? Was her reaction to their only date reasonable, regardless of whether he did something wrong? Mishandling the story could have meant justifying sexual assault, so it is understandable that Fogel and screenwriter Michelle Ashford (“Operation Mincemeat”) felt the need to explain their every point.
While the short story lets the audience ask these questions themselves by weaving them through the implications of Margot’s thoughts and actions, the film asks them outright, blatantly stating every point via dialogue. These explanations use the simplest terms to at least imply a correct answer to any questions they raise if none is explicitly given. The audience is not allowed to interpret anything for fear they would interpret it wrong.
Even inconsequential events get a dialogue explanation. On their pre-first date hangout in Margot’s college classroom, Margot takes a pack of red vines out of a bag. We see the red vines. Then Robert says, “red vines.”
Roupenian’s story asks the reader to play a role. The personal connections and individual interpretations are what made the story relevant — it belonged, in part, to the readers. Fogel’s film fights tooth and nail to prevent audience involvement.
To its credit (I guess) I wouldn’t call the film problematic. Editor Jacob Craycroft (“Pachinko”) said in the press line that the sex scene was one of the “trickier” ones to cut because he wanted to tell the story without “hanging anyone completely out to dry.” This meant including a second Margot in the scene, who stands in the corner of the room, exasperated when Original Margot says that it will be easier to go through with it than explain to Robert that she has changed her mind. While discussing something serious, neither Margot seems that concerned by what’s happening. Their conversation feels like a sitcom scene trying to hit three jokes a minute; Margot is painted as dumb for ignoring her alternate self’s seemingly obvious suggestions and the whole scene, while hoping to be thought-provoking, feels more intent on telling the viewer, “Don’t worry, this doesn’t need to feel uncomfortable; it’s all a bit sarcastic and comical, see?”
The film’s persistent humor does not complicate a dark, ambiguous story but works as a protective shield, not allowing the story to say anything new or escape shallow commentary stated less subtly than “Promising Young Woman.”
Fogel said that, while trying to stay true to the source material, the story evolved in its translation to film. Most notably: They turned it into a thriller.
Well, sort of. Nothing that bad can happen to the characters without erasing that “who is in the right?” ambiguity meant to give the story consequence. The tone of a thriller works well. When Margot walks home from work alone at night and her phone dies, the ominous styling of the scene gets the audience to feel her fear and conveys an experience many viewers, especially women, can relate to — a situation that shouldn’t be scary but is.
Worth noting: This was a rare scene that trusted Jones’s acting to get the point across without excessive explanation. In this scene, where Margot puts in earbuds and blares Britney Spears’s “Gimme More” while walking down the dark sidewalk, Jones brings a truth and relatability to her character as she appears at once determined to stride home to the beat of her music and glances behind her, unable to rid herself of fear. In the film’s many over-written moments, Jones and Braun must lean into the slightly comedic tone to pull off unrealistic lines, but here, Jones draws out the emotion the film is hesitant to touch.
The plot itself wants and tries to be a thriller, as if it looked its high-spirited self in the mirror and realized what it actually wanted was to be taken seriously. It isn’t sure how to achieve this. The thriller-esque moments are mostly confined to Margot’s imagination — she pictures Robert attacking her at various points, locking her in his car and trying to suffocate her in a lab at her college. It doesn’t truly commit to the genre until the final 30 minutes, which I got through only by imagining how satisfying it would have been to ruthlessly cut them from the screenplay.
Roupenian’s short story ends with a series of texts Margot receives from Robert. The film continues after that. I would not be surprised to find out that Ashford originally ended the script with the texts, was told to add a set piece to make the script sellable and tacked the final 30 minutes on without joy, care or ceremony. These final minutes serve no purpose and push Margot into actions so uncharacteristic and out of line with the rest of the script that it feels more false than the imagined therapy scenes.
“Cat Person,” afraid of misinterpretation, strips away any thematic nuance and disallows any interpretation. We won’t be talking about this film; it’s done enough explaining on its own.
Senior Arts Editor Erin Evans can be reached at erinev@umich.edu.