Cat Skin (2017): Visually stunning, Narratively flawed

Recently, I had the (dis)pleasure of watching the 2017 film, Cat Skin. Other than what I had gathered from the trailer, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It was a case of “Hey, that one person recommended this to me as something I might like, might as well watch it and write an analysis on it!”

Before I begin, I’d like to mention that I am going into quite a bit of detail and considering that the movie deals with a lot of dark and mature themes that could potentially be quite upsetting, reader discretion is advised.

Cat Skin follows the story of our protagonist, Cat. A loner photography student who is burdened by her mother’s illness and homophobia from her fellow peers. But of course, like any great coming-of-age story, she ends up meeting that one person who will change her life forever. And by meeting, I mean she takes photos of from a distance, not so discreetly. This person is April, a music student with a conservative mother and a boyfriend, Steven, whom she has a less than healthy relationship with. And thus, a series of events occur, where April and Cat forcibly become friends and their relationship blossoms from there on out.

Sounds like a simple enough plot, not too bad. So what could possibly have gone wrong?

First, the positives. The movie opens with a montage of Cat getting ready for her day and honestly is one of the better sequences in the film. Like many film festival movies, it had a great focus on its cinematography. The choice of angles and lighting, although sometimes a little basic, worked with the feel of the movie. The scene where Cat is developing photos in the dark room is super satisfying and beautifully lit. It felt extremely professional and actually kept my attention to it which is more than I can say for other parts of the film. Another notable feature was the soundtrack. It was brilliantly composed and definitely added to my overall enjoyment of it. Probably because I’m super into that Indie/Alternative vibe.

Now the negatives.

One of my biggest problems with the film is how dragged out some of the scenes are. The worst part about it is that these scenes rarely ever add to the plot. You could get away with skipping them entirely and you’d still be able to follow. For example, there are two scenes where the girls are playing with themselves and it just goes on and on. April’s scene is the worst of the two, with her just fumbling with the jacket she’s wearing for a good minute until you realise what’s actually going on. I know Cat Skin was for an indie film festival and therefore you’d expect those super “artsy” and out of mainstream scenes but that doesn’t mean it makes it good! The only exception to the “lack of plot and slow” scenes is one from early on where Cat is taking photos of April at the skatepark. There's a focus on Cat in the foreground while Steven and his friends are in the back talking about his relations with April. It was kind of smart how it made you put all your concentration on either the image of Cat and the sounds of her clicking her old fashioned camera, or the quite important dialogue of the background characters. Now that’s an artsy scene I would give an award to.

I think one of the movie’s most common criticisms come from the last ten minutes of the film. Picture this, the two had just gotten into a conflict and you think they’re just going to talk it out and it’ll all be fine. I mean, there’s only ten more minutes, what else could they possibly do? And I’ll tell you what they did. They make you watch April get sexually assaulted by her boyfriend for an excruciatingly long amount of time. Way to drop a bombshell out of nowhere. To be fair to the movie, I will give it props for how well this scene was shot. The way the camera turns as it focuses on the expression of the actress is phenomenal and definitely brings through that intended feel of uneasiness and disgust.

This scene ends with Cat ultimately intervening with a major fight breaking out between Cat and Steven. Cat reigns victorious and goes over to console April. Then for some god forsaken reason, the camera cuts to Steven just crying as Cat stares at him dead in the eyes. This is a creative decision I have no clue why it was made. Were we supposed to feel sorry for him? Does this show his remorse for his actions or his acceptance that he had lost something “dear” to him to this random girl he barely knows?

The final shot of the movie shows the two girls cuddling in Cat’s bed as music plays and the camera pans out. Cue cut to black.

The emphasis in a coming-of-age story is change. And unfortunately, the movie falls short on in this category. Out of the many characters in this film, I argue that only April truly changes through the course of it. She starts as this happy and carefree girl who knows nothing about her sexuality. As she learns from her experiences with her own mother and of course, Cat, she ends up figuring out who she really is. She grows stronger by the end of the movie and out of the cast, she suffers the most hardships.

Yes, Cat gets literally dragged down the stairs and thrown out of April’s house by her mother but it didn’t change her in anyway. Also, she gets mad at April for this for no good reason. I mean, she tears all her photos of April and has a whole meltdown. Cat doesn’t learn or change. She starts as an unconfident loner and by the end, she’s an unconfident loner with a girlfriend. There’s a critical scene where her photography teacher tries to coax more out of her when she shows the photos she took of April. There’s this hesitation as we expect to reveal how she is emotionally and personally connected to the subject of her photographs. Then she doesn’t. It felt like wasted potential! She could have been shown, that even with all the constant harassment she goes through, she’s proud of who she is but the film robs us of this.

The movie tried to be too much. For its one hour and thirty-seven minute run time, it brought up too many details only to drop them completely. There’s this whole underlying internal struggle with Cat as she tries to deal with being alone as her mother is bed-ridden in hospital. They mention that her dad died when she was young and how she continues to smoke to this day even though her mother suffers from lung cancer. They’re extremely important character traits and I wish they’d been developed more.

Actually, the mother issue is used as the catalyst for Cat and April to get together but it’s honestly quite jarring. The tonal shift from “Hey. my mum died” to “Hey, let’s have sex” felt incredibly out of place. With that said, the movie is a textbook example of the tragic gay narrative. This doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie, but when you take basic cliches like affairs, and the poorly written examples of homophobia such as in the nightclub scene where Cat gives April her jacket and some girl in the bathroom states, with disgust, “I didn’t realise this was a gay club”, it then becomes narratively genenric. I know everyone is trying to grasp at any representation they can get their hands on, but I’m not sure this movie is worth it.

The movie overall felt like the crew put a lot of work into it, the two actresses certainly had chemistry between them, and again, the camerawork and soundtrack was brilliant. However that only disappoints me more. The story itself felt flawed and didn’t hold up to the intensity of the acting and cinematography. The pacing was poor, leaving nothing feeling like it was very high stakes until the final ten minutes. There were some ups but mainly, a lot of downs. I just wish it could have been better executed but it ended up being a slow mess of a film.