After watching Succession, I developed a slight obsession with Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg in the show, so I looked up other movies he had done, and one of them was called Cat Person. The poster featured him and a young woman kissing, so I assumed it was going to be this sweet romantic drama about a young woman and a young man finding love.
That is, until I watched the trailer. (Spoiler: the movie is a psychological thriller)
To be honest, I am quite ignorant and before watching the movie, I had not read The New Yorker story “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian, but the trailer looked interesting, so I wanted to learn more. Honestly, as a young woman who has struggled with a similar situation as the main character, Margot, it was pretty tough to watch and to be honest, I wasn’t sure which elements were supposed to be serious and which elements were supposed to be comedic. It was categorized as a horror/thriller and I’m not a big fan of jump scenes, so I ended up reading the parents’ guide for information about potentially violent content, which isn’t a great idea because then you can predict the plot, but I’m a scaredy cat when it comes to horror movies and thrillers, so I decided to do my research before coming in cold.
The movie deals with the grey area of consent in romantic relationships. Margot is working at a movie theater concession stand and a tall man named Robert approaches her and buys some treats before going to see the movie. She finds herself attracted to him, and then he approaches her another time and asks for her number. Pretty soon, they are hitting it off, but Margot’s friend, Taylor, isn’t sure that Robert is the cute 20-something-year old guy he is posing as (it turns out that he is actually 34) and Taylor tells Margot she needs to set texting boundaries with Robert. Margot, however, doesn’t think Robert is going to listen to her if she sets those boundaries and so she continues the texting conversations. When he texts back, she feels thrilled, but when he doesn’t text back, she sends a lot of double and triple texts (to be fair, he double and triple texts her a lot, too.) They finally see a movie together, but Robert keeps sending all these ambivalent signs that he’s not really sure about their relationship, and so throughout the film Margot is wondering where to draw the line between all these fantasies she has about Robert and the reality of who Robert is. She imagines him sitting on a therapist’s couch and telling him that Margot is this beautiful girl, and it was love at first sight, but there are also the incredibly dark and terrifying moments where she imagines him beating her, yelling at her, and holding her hostage. Taylor finally gets tired of Margot not setting her boundaries and grabs her phone, and texts Robert (she makes it look like Margot was texting instead of her) that she isn’t interested in texting him anymore. At first, Robert seems to be respectful, but then his insecurities come out and there is a scene where the room goes dark except for the blue light on Margot’s phone, and Margot and Taylor huddle together in their dorm room while reading Robert’s incessant texts, with him finally calling her a “whore” in his final text. Margot realizes that Taylor was right, that there were a lot of red flags about Robert. The story by Kristen Roupenian ends with Robert calling Margot a “whore” over text, but the movie doesn’t stop with the text, but culminates into Margot sneaking into Robert’s house and Robert beating her violently while she tries to call 911 and escape, and then accidentally starting a huge fire in Robert’s house.
Even though I don’t have much dating experience, I have been in similar situations like Margot. And after reading the short story “Cat Person,” I got chills because I have been in similar situations as Margot has. I hadn’t gone on dates with any of these older men who were trying to flirt with me, but the encounters made me wonder whether it was okay for me to text them or engage with them in any way. There was one time I was working as a barista, and a really nice older gentleman came up during the six o’ clock in the morning shift. I was the only barista behind the counter. Our interactions were fine at the beginning, and he was really nice because he tipped me $20 every time that I made his tuxedo mocha latte drink for him. He kept coming, and to be honest, at a time when I was strapped for cash and fresh out of college, I needed the extra tip money to go towards paying off my student loans, so I was quite grateful for the generous tips this man gave. However, when I told my therapist, she encouraged me to be careful because I don’t always know people’s intentions. I broke down and cried because this older gentleman and I had a lot of great conversations, but as a people-pleaser and someone who, while growing up, was told that I was always “so polite,” maybe even “too polite,” I didn’t want to say no. I ended up writing a fictional story in my private time to get all this anxiety about encountering this man off my chest, and I also chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist mantra I chant) to gain clarity and wisdom to know what to do, since this was also during a time when I didn’t know how to set clear boundaries with people. One day, I was setting up the counter and the Tuxedo Mocha man walked in. He came in with his traditional smile and his $20 bill, and I tried to be super polite and was a little flustered and my heart kept beating at about 100 beats per minute. He laughed and said, “You don’t have to be all polite for me, just because I’m a customer. No, girl, I came to see you.” And honestly, I wasn’t sure how to react. My parents were suspicious of the guy, my therapist was, my coworker had told me that he might be one of those “sugar daddy” type of people. I was wondering if I was misinterpreting this man’s greeting as a flirtation or just a regular non-romantic or sexual greeting. I wondered if I was giving off mixed signals that I was coming onto him, if I was being too friendly. When he came in next time, I was with other coworkers, and the minute he came up to the counter and said hi to me, I panicked and politely asked one of the other baristas to make his drink while I hurried to the bathroom and broke down in tears. I felt so stupid and confused at that moment. I didn’t love him, I just love being a friendly person to people, so why was I freaking out over my interaction with this man? To this day, I’m still not sure what was going on between me and this older gentleman, but after that, he never came back. I was worried that all the nice tip money he gave me was gone forever when he left, but somehow, after a lot of perseverance and tears, I still managed to pay off my student loans even though he no longer came to the Starbucks.
Throughout the movie, I was so stressed. It brought back a lot of personal experiences for me. There was a time where I had met someone older than me, and he was a nice guy, but then when we started texting each other, I wasn’t clear about what my boundaries were, and so I wasn’t able to communicate clear texting boundaries to him. We would text each other constantly, and at first it was nice because it was just a casual friendship, but then at some point I felt a deep anxiety gnawing at me, wondering if this was appropriate to continue texting him. Then he asked me to dinner and called me and left voicemail messages, and I would avoid his texts and voicemails, and then I would apologize, feeling bad for missing his messages. After a while, we stopped texting each other and we still managed to be on good terms, and he found someone else, so it all worked out. I was sad at first that it didn’t work out and that I ended up ignoring his texts and calls, but I realized that I wanted to only say “yes” to us going on a date because I was worried about hurting his feelings. I didn’t know if he wanted to just be friends or something more, so instead of asking him directly, I decided to avoid his messages. I didn’t know how to set clear boundaries when we were interacting over text, and so I just tried to not address it at all. Margot goes along with her sexual encounter with Robert because she doesn’t feel comfortable saying “no” or “stop,” and there is a version of her that is telling her that it’s okay to tell Robert she doesn’t want to have sex anymore, but she keeps arguing with that version of her, thinking that it’s going to be romantic and that she is going to like it. But she ends up not enjoying the sex, and after a while their text conversations get less and less fun as Margot starts to see how insecure and controlling Robert is. Finally, she stops responding to his messages as he continues to berate her. I was stressed watching the final scene where they fight because Robert doesn’t bother giving her saline solution for the pepper spray that she accidentally sprayed in her eye.
There are some pretty intense scenes during the film. I had to close my eyes at the beginning because there is a scene where Margot goes into her dorm and a dog follows her into her dorm, and her RA, Laura, tells her to take the dog outside since no pets are allowed in the dorms. Margot has a nightmare where she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds that the dog has mauled Laura. I read that this part was super bloody, so I decided to close my eyes. The end of the film is pretty intense, too. Throughout the film, I was just really stressed and uncomfortable, but that is how the movie is supposed to make you feel because in real life, young women have to deal with these kinds of uncomfortable interactions in relationships and a lot of times it is easier said than done to set clear boundaries and say “no.” Even when Taylor told Margot to say no and be firm about her boundaries, Margot wasn’t sure about what she wanted in her relationship with Robert, and also Robert made her feel bad about wanting to assert her boundaries and also intimidated her, so it wasn’t easy for her to say “no.” (To be fair, there have been times when I haven’t respected other people’s boundaries, and I had to reflect on that and chant about it.) I thought about this scary ad from the Ad Council that I listened to in which Jamie Lee Curtis narrates this chilling story about a teenage woman who meets a guy online who says he is in junior high like her, and they strike up a conversation and he says they should meet up. The young woman meets him in real life, and it turns out that he “wasn’t nice, wasn’t in junior high and wasn’t a 14-year-old boy.” It reminded me of how Margot and Robert find out each other’s actual ages. There is a scene in the movie where Robert takes Margot out to a bar, and Margot can’t get in even after the guy checks her ID, and Robert is upset with Margot that he didn’t tell her she was 20 and under the legal limit to drink alcohol. Then after the unpleasant sexual encounter, Margot finds out that Robert is 34 years old, and she doesn’t get to see any of his cats and wonders if he made up a lot of the details that he told her about himself.
I wasn’t sure about watching this movie at first since it didn’t get a super high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I was so curious about the movie that I decided to watch it anyway. I’m not used to watching a lot of intense thrillers, but this was a pretty interesting film. I am pretty creeped out after watching it, but like I said, it was supposed to be an uncomfortable film to watch. Although one part I did appreciate was that they gave a shout-out to asexuals during the film. The guy who Margot was dating confesses to her at her stepdad’s birthday party that he realized he is asexual. It of course was difficult for Margot to swallow the news, and I understand it was, but I also don’t see a lot of asexual characters in film and TV (I haven’t seen BoJack Horseman or Sex Education yet, but I heard they also have asexual representation) so even just having a minor character identify as “ace” made me light up a little, speaking as someone who is coming to terms with my own asexuality. I also looked up who Susanna Fogel, the director, was, and it turns out that she co-wrote one of my favorite movies, Booksmart!
Cat Person. 2023. Directed by Susanna Fogel. Runtime: 2 hours. Rated R.
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