Cat Person movie storyline. Kristen Roupenian’s 2017 New Yorker short story “Cat Person” went viral for its of-the-moment topicality about sexual politics and gender dynamics as much as its mystery. The plot, in which a 20-year-old college student goes against her instincts to date a 34-year-old man and regrets it, is riddled with uncertainties and switchbacks until the thunderclap last line. But while Susanna Fogel’s film adaptation hews to that spirit for a good two-thirds of its runtime, it eventually chucks any lack of certitude overboard and goes for the jugular.
Margot (Emilia Jones) is bright yet terminally insecure, at least to the point that she entertains going on a date with a guy who practically has a warning sign tattooed on his forehead. Working the concession stand at a revival movie theater, she strikes up a conversation with the gangly and dorky Robert (Nicholas Braun), who seems to be a regular customer. That morphs into a text flirtation that’s initially more humorous than romantic. Though Margot never seems nearly as into Robert as he is into her—asked by her roommate Taylor (Geraldine Viswanathan) what the attraction is, Margot points out how tall he is—she eventually acquiesces.
Margot and Robert’s stutter-start relationship, layered with misunderstandings and subtle insults, is one of the joys of this initially riveting film. Robert switches from awkward and effusive wooing to snide jabs that suggest an extremely thin skin. Meanwhile, Margot flips from being bubbly around Robert to spiraling into panic about his possible ulterior motives, the latter fueled by Taylor’s angry demands that Margot cut things off. Margot ultimately settles on a disassociated passivity that Cat Person pegs as a survival tactic even as it fascinatingly mines it for comedy: In a notable scene, Margot finds herself getting through some very bad sex with Robert by imagining that she’s talking with another version of herself.
Early on, Jones and Braun’s subtle work elevates the largely unspoken tensions in Margot and Robert’s increasingly cringe-inducing relationship, while Viswanathan’s punchy brashness helps ground a story where the main characters rarely say what they mean. Though Margot appears to be going along with the relationship with Robert more because she likes the idea of being wanted and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, there are times when she does seem to enjoy his company. It’s a testament to the lead performers that Margot and Robert’s pas de deux maintains its intriguing and risk-shrouded ambiguity for so long.
While Cat Person stays in that space of mystery and unknowing, it succeeds. The film, laced with snidely funny dialogue and marked by a lack of big moments or revelations, is built out with moody cinematography, suggestions of threat, and unexpectedly biting humor. In one of its better needle drops, Margot blasts Britney Spears’s “Gimme More,” which seems at first like a mere attempt at prompting our laughter before her battery dies and the eerie silence makes clear that she was just trying to build her courage for a scary and lonely walk home. As in some other recent films about college life, the campus in Cat Person is marked more by looming shadows and potential enemies than learning and partying.
Michelle Ashford’s screenplay is largely faithful to the events of Roupenian’s original story for much of the film’s duration. Many of the additions, like Margot’s quick-flash nightmare visualizations of Robert attacking her, are sensible compromises given the change of medium. But some are mystery-draining. Putting a Margaret Atwood quote on screen (“Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them”) certainly aligns with the film’s politicized moments, mostly embodied by Taylor’s combative yet usually correct admonitions to Margot about knowing her worth, but it cannot help but feel like hand-holding.
A worse change comes near the end. Rather than sticking with the original story’s hauntingly minimal capper, the film tacks on a half hour of more dramatic but ultimately preposterous events that make what came before feel like a completely different and far better film. Starting out as a dark and somewhat unknowable comedy of manners about male toxicity, Cat Person turns into a domestic thriller so absurd that it feels like another of Margot’s daydreams.
Cat Person (2023)
Directed by: Susanna Fogel
Starring: Emilia Jones, Nicholas Braun, Geraldine Viswanathan, Hope Davis, Fred Melamed, Isabella Rossellini, Hope Davis, Christopher Shyer, Liza Koshy, Josh Andrés Rivera, Melissa Lehman
Screenplay by: Michelle Ashford, Kristen Roupenian
Production Design by: Sally Levi
Cinematography by: Manuel Billeter
Film Editing by: Jacob Craycroft
Costume Design by: Ava Yuriko Hama
Set Decoration by: Ben Campbell, Caroline B. Scott
Art Direction by: Beau Tepper
Music by: Heather McIntosh
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Rialto Pictures (United States)
Release Date: October 6, 2023
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