Paris. The marriage between the retired Julien and Clemence Bouin has been dead for quite some time now. They go shopping separately, sleep in two beds, eat at separate tables, and don't even speak while in their house. Julien lost his love for her years ago, and only shows affections for his cat. Clemence, a former circus trapeze performer, leaves the cat at a shopping mall and leaves. Julien searches for the cat all day, but it returns to their house eventually. Jealous, Clemence takes a pistol and shoots the cat. Angered, Julien leaves and goes to stay at a friend, Nelly, who is the owner of a hotel. Eventually, Julien returns to Clemence, but informs her that he will not speak a word to her anymore. They communicate only via notes. Clemence dies from a heart attack. When he finds her, Julien takes some pills and commits suicide.
A dark, bitter, astringent and 'rough' minimalistic drama about a disintegration of a marriage at old age, "The Cat" could go in the double bill with Haneke's "Amour" and Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage". Centering only around the retired couple, Julien and Clemence, the film achieved a very concise and precise mood, with small episodes from their daily routine presenting just enough to explain their relationship, their house surrounded by demolition crews that demolish old buildings, to symbolically show how everything around them is slowly collapsing, until they are next. Similarly like "Umberto D", "The Cat" shows the old age as a trap without any perspective, with small transitions leading to scarce flashback of their best days of youth and infatuation (Julien sees water running from the faucet, and this leads to his memory at a lake where they once swam and made love; Clemence is seen holding her stocking, and this leads to Julien's memory of taking her stockings from her legs when she was young). The cat serves as an allegory for the last remaining remains of Julien's emotions towards anything in life, since he feels apathy and indifference at old age, and Clemence tries to "awaken" him from this lethargic state through sometimes provokative means (she slices his newspaper collection in the basement). However, once the cat is gone, Julien has nothing more to live for or feel excited about in life, all leading to a tragic ending and contemplations that sometimes people only realize what they have when they lose it. While not as great as it could have been, since a good deal of the movie is conventional, "The Cat" is an overall very impressive and mature work.
Grade:+++
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