Battle of the Sexes, MeToo Style

The New Yorker magazine is having a moment when it comes to the movies. Two years ago, “The French Dispatch” was released in theaters and director Wes Anderson readily admitted that the fictional magazine at the heart of the movie was inspired by the venerable periodical. Last year, the Netflix thriller “Spiderhead” was based on a short story by George Saunders that first appeared in the magazine. Earlier New Yorker-to-screen entertainments include “Brokeback Mountain” and “Adaptation.”The new movie “Cat Person” is the latest to make the jump from the magazine’s pages to major motion picture. You may recall how the original story caused quite a brouhaha when it was published in 2017. Released at the height of the MeToo movement, the story by Kristen Roupenian focused on the tentative relationship between a female college student and a man in his early 30s. Well-observed and effectively concise, like the short-lived affair it describes, the tale had people talking, with sympathetic reactions toward one or the other of the two main characters essentially falling along gender lines.The movie version takes the story and does more than just run with it, leaping, tripping, soaring, and coming crashing down over it. We begin as the story begins, in a movie theater. Protagonist Margot works the concession stand at an arty cinema in an unspecified college town. After some mild flirting with a patron, who will later become the other half in this spiky pas de deux, we see Margot walk back to campus and encounter a big dog, an incident not in the short story. Evoking Stephen King’s “Cujo,” director Susanna Fogel and screenwriter Michelle Ashford waste no time in making clear that their movie will ramp up the tone of uneasiness — even horror — in the text. Many other movies are referenced in the film version, sometimes directly via clips. When Margot and the patron, Robert, go on a date to watch “The Empire Strikes Back,” one of his favorite films, the filmmakers hone in on its seduction scene, the one in which Hans Solo (Harrison Ford) kisses Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) just before he tells her she “could be a little nicer” and she tells him to “stop that” as he rubs her hand. Seen in the context of recent discussions over consent and overbearing masculinity, the exchange and kiss could be called problematic. Used perceptively by Ms. Fogel and Ms. Ashford to bolster their movie’s themes, the inclusion of the Star Wars moment also demonstrates how Robert is just as beholden to romantic notions as young Margot is. Effective use of another movie aside, one of the problems with “Cat Person” is that the filmmakers don’t trust the audience to read into all the issues already embedded within the story’s plot and characters without spelling them out. Therefore, male and female relations are addressed in the most clumsily obvious manner in the first 20 minutes, from Margot’s best friend’s forum called “The Vagenda” to her anthropology professor’s talk of the sexual lives of ants and bees. The latter character is played by Isabella Rossellini and I can think of no other reason for the inclusion of insects other than to align the movie with Ms. Rossellini’s cult series of short films in which she re-enacts the mating rituals of arthropods while wearing comical costumes. For much of its runtime, though, the movie hews pretty closely to Ms. Roupenian’s story, tracking how the incessant texting between Margot and Robert creates the illusion of a perfect match without the messiness of face-to-face interactions. As in the story, Margot goes home during a school break and the filmmakers elaborate on what was just a few sentences in the original text. Hope Davis as Margot’s mom has a great scene in which she discusses compromise with her daughter, but the rest of the familial filler should have been excised. It only slows the movie down in its inevitable progression toward the twosome’s first sexual encounter.Beat for beat, this awkward sex scene matches the original, with the filmmakers adding a mordant note by having Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” play in the background while Margot internally questions her decision-making. Last seen in the Oscar-winning “Coda,” Emilia Jones captures every emotional and rational moment of Margot’s predicament. Throughout the movie, she also portrays the girl’s privileged and self-centered demeanor deftly, accurately highlighting how most young people take almost everything for granted. Nicholas Braun of “Succession” fame nails Robert’s often patronizing tone and detached sensitivity, with the actor nearly humanizing a character who’s just a few degrees from creepy.Speaking of creepy, once the short story’s endpoint is reached, the filmmakers really ratchet up the nightmarish quotient with a Grand Guignol final half hour. Many fans of the tale will balk at such creative license, yet this viewer found that it not only reinforces Ms. Roupenian’s overall message — that toxic masculinity and feminine passivity feed on each other — but also takes the story to a more satisfyingly visual conclusion. After all, the way the short story ends, with a text message, can hardly be called cinematic. And cinema is central to these characters and the way they see themselves — to both their benefit and detriment.

Battle of the Sexes, MeToo Style

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