Film festivals are a curious thing. While most filmmakers would be excited to get into a big one like Sundance, there are downsides to being picked, as all of a sudden, you’re under a magnifying glass. Bad worth of mouth can kill a promising movie, and for a while, that’s what seemed to happen to Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person. Going into the fest, it was one of the buzziest titles, as it was based on a New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian that went super viral and boasted star Emilia Jones’s follow-up role to the best picture winning CODA. It also co-starred Succession’s Nicholas Braun and rising star Geraldine Viswanathan (Drive Away Dolls).
Yet, the movie received mixed-to-negative reviews at the festival (although mine was very positive) and, by all accounts, had difficulty finding a distributor. However, the StudioCanal-produced film is finally coming out via Rialto Films, a distributor that primarily handles repertory releases, such as the upcoming remaster of Winter Kills.
Cat Person is about a young college student (Jones) who becomes infatuated – and then repulsed – by an older man (Braun) who handles her rejection…poorly. The film sparked much debate at Sundance, with much criticism levelled at the film for departing from the short story in the movie’s third act and turning it into a thriller. I was surprised by the harsh reaction, as the press screening I saw the movie at was rollicking and certainly didn’t seem to be showing in a room full of people who hated it. Something similar happened when I saw Green Book at TIFF; it seemed like the discourse gradually swayed people’s opinions about the film, which spelled disaster for the pricey pic’s attempts to find a distributor. Indeed, Rialto is a more niche company, but hopefully, the film catches on, and this Sundance story has a happy ending.
Will you be seeing Cat Person, or is this kind of movie premise getting a bit tiresome? Let us know in the comments.
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