I have no problem deeming The Strange Little Cat the strangest film yet in this year’s Spotlight Cinema series. And that’s not just a good thing. It’s a great thing.
Ramon Zürcher, who honed his craft under the tutelage of Béla Tarr, presents a slice of life in the apartment of one German family. But it’s a “merkwürdige” slice, if not an outright weird one. While never detailing more information than necessary — and that line of necessity is very much questionable — relationships both familial and spatial receive equal importance. Characters are often spaced out on opposite ends of the apartment’s entryway, a staging element that repeats and varies again and again. Repetition and variation are key elements James Kreul touches on in his review, and there’s a definite cinematic rhythm to preparing meals and performing household repairs.
What separates The Strange Little Cat from the rest of Spotlight Cinema’s schedule is its complete and utter dedication of those rhythms to formalism. Zürcher doesn’t just privilege rigid framing over dialogue; interpersonal interaction is married to that rigidity. The youngest daughter (Mia Kasalo) and her nonsensical (and absolutely hilarious) screams is the salient example, but Jenny Schily, who plays the mother, is the real anchor, and Zürcher continually point his lens at her fantastic expressions, a mixture of peace and sadness, to reinforce the opacity. Conversations, stretches of time, even whole relationships feel like they’ve been absorbed into this sterile German apartment; that we never really leave it says all the more about its power.
Rob Thomas observes a “completely unexplainable” sense of dread — Zürcher himself has deemed it a “horror movie without any horror.” But more than its off-kilter tone, The Strange Little Cat completely dedicates to its concept. Like a little girl’s emotionless screams, it’s provocation divorced from feeling.
- The Strange Little Cat plays Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 7:00p in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s lecture hall. General admission is $7 and FREE to MMoCA memebers. Doors at 6:30p.