‘Cat Person’ wins Sundance’s most cringe-worthy sex scene – Rolling Stone

It won’t Surprise anyone that pivot cat person – conditioning virus The New Yorker A short story by Christine Robinianthe literary fuse that went off a Million Response Articles And the sun’s hot-surface ticket Sundance – he sex Scene. It’s as inevitable as the fact that it’s going to be a “bad” sex scene, regardless of whether or not it’s a poorly made sex scene. The only question is to what level of atrocity it will be witnessed when the two characters at the center of this whirlpool meet, and whether it will make its counterpart on the page look relatively tame. (The other, more pressing question is: How the hell are you coping cat person In a movie at all? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

By this point, we have followed the development of the relationship between Margot (codaEmilia Jones), a 20-year-old college student, and Robert (Succession‘s Nicholas Brown), a 33-year-old man. We’ve seen them meet at her job, at a concession stand at the local arthouse theatre. You know, the kind with a lot of revival shows and trailers for old monster movies featuring “Young Woman, In Danger!!!” Their awkward flirtation led to a daily exchange of texts and inside jokes, as well as a late-night assignment to provide Margot food in the form of Fruity Pebbles, a kind of gesture that falls somewhere between suspicious and sweet. They finally go on a proper date, which includes seeing The empire strikes – one of his all-time favorites; Never mind what you find star Wars Boring movies – in the same theater where you work. Several beers and a very awful first kiss later, they go back to Robert’s house.

Margot pours some whiskey, but he doesn’t give her a chance to drink it. When they get to his bedroom, he puts on the Depeche Mode song “Enjoy the Silence.” (Don’t you understand? / Oh, my little girl.“) Robert alternates between aggressively undressing Margot and pulling himself out of his clothes. In the story, you imagine looking back on this worst moment ever with her future boyfriend as they laugh at her; this time, thanks to one of the great extras that screenwriter Michelle Ashford and director Susanna Fogel brought to table, Margot is having a constant conversation with herself as it happens. Mission abort, says Margot leaning against the wall. I can’t, it’s too late, replies Margot trapped between the man milling on top of her. I might hurt his feelings. Well, let’s get this over with, both. They reluctantly agree.

What follows is a scene of so much awkwardness and nuclear entitlement that you may want to avoid attempting intercourse again. Playing in real time, it’s a symphony of sexual inaccuracies, male oblivion, contradictory statements, perspectives on consent (apparently “let’s take it slow” translates to manually stimulating yourself with someone else’s hand without asking permission) and barking porn scenario recreation. It ends with Margot going through an out-of-body experience, looking down on herself as Robert treats her, in full oil Derek mode, like a prop. When he’s finished, he whispers, “Good girl.” It is the opposite of physical intimacy. More like pure bad sex nightmare fodder.

This is a screen version of cat personThe second most intoxicating moment on the page feels like it’s designed to make you sick, as well as spark at least a small ember of reflection in viewers: any Who does this sound familiar? Have you had some repeat of this before? The idea is that many, and most likely, a handful of self-aware male viewers will cringe in the confession. Like in the Robinian story, this confrontation will lead to Robert sending a sensitive dolphin emoji, Margot’s friend Tamara (Geraldine Viswanathan) texting a crude kiss on her friend’s phone, and that series of texts gradually descending into misogynistic, dude-rage. And a one-word dismissal that speaks volumes about Freudianism: “whore.”

Fogel is phasing this out at the moment-rigor The method displays texts on the screen as they appear, with each incoming ding doubling as a warning klaxon. Don’t make the heightened sense of dread any less effective. The camera slowly pans to the two young women as Robert’s surging letters pile up one by one. Tamar’s reactions grow more OMG. Margot’s face remains a mask of emotional numbness.

This is the place The New Yorker Edition ends, and like so many great short stories–“Tree, Rock, Cloud,” “Fighter,” “The Lottery”–it’s the aspects of compactness and connecting the dots that give cat person This depth charge power. That last series of strikes appears just after the halfway point cat person The film, however, deals with the biggest problem that plagues this entire endeavor: how to flesh this out into a three-act story that works as a two-hour feature film. Like Vogel and Ashford said the Hollywood Reporter A few days before the glitzy Sundance premiere on Saturday night, they decided to turn this into Get out– A horror flick-style social commentary. It’s kind Eureka! A choice that seems wise until you see the end result, at which point you might find yourself going: Um, really?

It’s not that cat person It Couldn’t Be a Horror Story – Beginning with a Margaret Atwood quote about men who fear humiliation and women who fear being killed by men, the film delves into the inherent dread that someone in a potentially dangerous situation might feel. Like, for example, dealing with an uneasy dude. (Brown’s height and Cousin Greg’s uneasiness with his own skin are weaponised here.) Ditto, something as simple as Sir Jones down a dark street late at night; Any number of women will tell you this is an IRL concern worthy of John Carpenter’s score.

But once the movie sticks to that idea, cat person He begins to clash with the traditions and limitations of his own genre in the worst way possible. There was already plenty of padding to get this feature length going: Isabella Rossellini giving a lecture on the ant queen, Hope Davis turning Margot’s mother into a needy narcissist, and some extra work on campus politics and Sondheim’s production. Into the forest (where Prince Charming is problematic), imagined therapy sessions, Viswanathan’s character sparring with someone on Reddit known as “The Vagenda.” Not to mention the incidents that are mentioned in passing in the story that are made into full sequences.

By also trying to mold this material into a ready-made horror mould, cat personA cup really does spill. That’s why we get to see a great scene involving fight and fire and Margot’s transition from “Concession-Stand Girl” (Robert’s derogatory nickname for her) to one last girl that doesn’t feel more forced. Even worse, he seems to lean into the idea that much of the recent act’s noise and compromising feelings of safety are in fact to her False – move looks WTF at best. These elements should add context to the culture that produced these problems. Instead, it reduces everything to sarcastic weak tea and a stockpile of creepy movie beats. Toxic masculinity It may be the beast in the eyes of modern men, however, and the attempt to give it shape in cinematic terms fails painfully.

What the movie owes quite well, admittedly, is the movies themselves. Robert’s favorite actor is Harrison Ford, and he speaks dialogue empire A scene featuring Han Solo cuddling with Leia before kissing her roughly. When he sends Margot a post-coital montage of Ford’s greatest hits the next day, Tamara explains how the scenes from Indiana Jones movies and Blade Runner Selling the idea that women are not co-opted as much as sheer will. The sounds of a 1950s trailer playing at Margot Theatre, about evil unleashed on damsels in distress, is no accident. Nor is an excerpt from American Graffiti We see the 12-year-old normalize hanging out with an older man. Don’t even get us started on the song-and-dance routine Margot performs with her mom for her stepfather: Marilyn Monroe “My heart belongs to my father” [shudder] From 1960 Let’s make love. You can’t say that cat person He is ashamed of taking the means to the task of selling a romantic ideal more than curd. If only this was stern and critical about the source material itself.