Rent Catfight (2016)

Catfight review by Adrijan Arsovski - Cinema Paradiso

Given the recent streak of mediocre to barely-watchable films that has been going on for a while, Catfight was a solid surprise and a hidden creative gem while we’re at it. Make no mistake though: this film is definitely not for everyone and I can see lots of people feeling left out due to the film’s sarcastic and deeply subversive nature. The ones who’ll endure Catfight will be in for a treat: the film is bizarrely funny, absurdly eloquent, and most of all – insanely fun. So yeah, Catfight is definitely a creative piece of celluloid tape and a cult film in the making.

The film is directed by indie filmmaker Onur Tukel and markets itself as an action/comedy, even if it’s a far cry from that genre (as seen above). It shows two women named Veronica (Sandra Oh) and Ashley (Anne Heche) who had nurtured a close friendship sometimes in the distant past (during their college years), but are now bitter rivals on the completely opposite side of the social spectrum. One of them (Veronica) is a wealthy, upper middle-class housewife who now has it easy in life. The other friend Ashley is a struggling artist who’s trying to conceive a child with her spouse Lisa (played by Alicia Silverstone). Oh and by the way, Veronica has a teenage son whilst, as mentioned, Ashley does not as of the time that the two of them meet. And the conflict between them, well let’s just say that it is the meat of the film and the most interesting aspect from a critical viewpoint.

The main conflict starts slowly, with an off-screen buildup that is even more effective than just blurted lines of exposition that lesser films nowadays would use instead. This also leaves some room for mystery and allows for an additional character development further down the running time of the film.

One important thing to note is that Catfight works on so many levels that it’s hard to even describe: the catfights were brutal, visceral, and downright ridiculous at times; the humor worked very well insofar providing entertainment is concerned; the nihilistic, black/comedy part of the film served as a great counterpoint to balance out the ridiculousness of it all; and finally, the characters were believable and written with great attention to detail, so in this aspect the screenwriters did a pretty decent job of portraying how a certain character would act in a setting such as the one that’s featured in Catfight.

Overall, doesn’t promise much, and to this extent it most certainly over-delivers, if else. Great fun to be had with this one, but it’s definitely not suitable for a family screening. In fact, you’ll know if you’ll like the film just by reassessing your sarcastic wit and assessing your sense of humor (‘black’ means yes).