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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

Cat Person review – tense adaptation of the viral dating short story

Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun in Cat Person.
‘Needling doubts’: Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun in Cat Person. AP Photograph: AP

The minefield of dating in the modern world is deftly explored in the first two acts of Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person. Adapted from a viral New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian, the film casts an eye across the impossible chasm between a polished digital persona and the warts-and-all in-person interaction; between the expectations and romantic approaches of Margot (Emilia Jones), a gen Z college student, and a millennial older man Robert (Nicholas Braun).

But the precision and economy of the story, with its needling doubts and queasy, churning-gut instincts, is lost in a third act that escalates into a lurid, messily violent generic climax that is both infinitely dumber and far less unsettling than the tense, uneasy courtship that precedes it.

Watch a trailer for Cat Person.
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