Audience Member
Attempts to be an artistic statement of work by telling a small story using long static camera shots that hang onto a character's facial expression or action while both background and foreground sounds are playing to act as transitions to the next long shot.
It's certainly commendable, but in my opinion, it does not translate to an entertaining nor engrossing film for general audiences and even some movie goers.
It should really be viewed more as a study in cinematography.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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Audience Member
Don and I didn't get this movie at all. Huge disappointment!
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
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Audience Member
A beautiful video portrait of a family!
Indeed a beautiful video portrait of a family and friends coming together for an evening. I wanted to like it more, but not impressed by the overall product. However, I liked very much the film theme, not very unique, yet simpler and different than those I've seen. The cat was the centre of the narration as the title suggests, but it was seen rarely within the video frame and sometimes the characters mentions it, but we know it was around there where our eyes can't reach.
On an ordinary day, about an ordinary family and their ordinary event which might remind you your own family or the others you're familiar with. I don't know the cast, but I liked their character displays. Each one offered so many topics on what they were doing, because I can easily say it was not completely written script, but they were improvised while the camera was on the roll. As the actors that's what they do, but as a viewer I must appreciate the effort. Even the kids were so impressive, yet like I said overall film fallen short by a slight margin.
I'm a semi-artist, those who are interested in the art would stare at the paintings for a very long time to observe the details closely like every visible stroke the artist did. Likewise, in this, the details were very impressive. In every scene, there's something happening like each scene has its own twist before going to the next. What I meant was, it was not like those lazy films I'd seen in my life with boring scenes where camera stands still and nothing happens for a very long time. That's the reason I usually dislike art films, but a very few like this makes my day.
6/10
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
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Audience Member
A mysterious and intriguing whatsit of a movie, TSLC plays more like a dazzling technical exercise than an actual film. But it points in many exciting directions for director Ramon Zurcher
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
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Audience Member
Strange, indeed, if all the human characters represent the title's cat. The plot stays at the fringe while everyday life is front and center. Astutely observed, this film challenges the notion of what a film can and should be.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
What a strange little movie.
With arty movies like this, there's always the question of whether it's thematically rich and fascinating or just boring and pretentious. A lot of people have been bored by this movie, I'm sure, especially if you don't know what it is going in, but I found it pretty entertaining. If it went on for a lot longer, it might've gotten dry, but at 72 minutes, it felt very tight.
I've already read some stuff about this movie, so I can't necessarily say that I would come to these conclusions by myself, but the movie seems to be focused on finding the mystery and oddity in mundane moments. There are short little vignettes where a character will tell a story, and there's nothing super remarkable about the story, but the character will tell it with a kind of wistfulness, and it feels imbued with meaning. Maybe some people would just call that faux-intellectual, but the stories don't need to necessarily have some overarching thematic purpose. The story that Karin tells, for example, about pieces of orange peel landing white face-up, doesn't imply anything about life or love or anything huge. It's just a little interesting thing you'd notice.
Life is always thought of in such broad terms, and when we watch our movies or TV and read our books, we look for commentary on big, important things. We always want a movie to say something, or at least provoke us into thinking new things. We want new perspectives on love, hate, God, war, success, failure, and family. But even though those are all huge things, so much of life gets ignored simply because of its mundaneness. But the mundane things are important through the sheer amount of space and time they take up in our lives.
I think that's why I really enjoyed this movie. It seeks to illuminate the parts of life that we never bother exploring just because we're always concerned with bigger things. Sometimes, though, the meaningless things become meaningful just from how much they infiltrate our lives.
The whole movie just feels so real. I felt like I was watching real people, like somehow I knew Karin and Simon better than most other film characters, just because I was watching their faces so much. There's a wonderful thing the film does that I've never seen movies do before: it lingers on things. Karin will be talking, but Mother's face will be shown, even if her reaction isn't critical to the scene (nothing is really 'critical' to the movie, since it's basically plotless). We're made to really get inside these characters' minds, because we're seeing them at times when we wouldn't usually get the chance to see them. Most dialogue in movies darts back and forth between faces, with occasional two-shots showing both characters. Cameras are constantly changing to give us a view of what's most important in the shot. But like I mentioned, there's nothing really 'important' going on here. We're examining the unimportant. Which is what so much of life is.
If there was one thing that the movie made me think of, it was Thanksgiving. It made me think of every year, when all my family is gathering together for Thanksgiving dinner, and things are being prepared in the early afternoon, and there's a mix of ease and efficiency as everyone moves around and intermingles and people are making the food. And then, there's me standing there, leaning against something and just observing, sometimes listening to a long story or sometimes just zoning out and watching something. I thought of that the whole time I was watching this movie. It's rare that a movie can capture this facet of life so fascinatingly, but I think this one does.
P.S. Let's talk about some specific characters. Clara was adorable. Karin and Simon were my favorite characters, I think, just because of how real they felt; Karin especially felt like a character I rarely see depicting in movies, maybe partly just because of how she looks. But there was such an easy family chemistry between everyone that everyone felt pretty real. I was also a fan of Father (I think? Whoever had the sausage squirted at him). The one character who mystified me was Mother. I wasn't sure what her deal was; I kept waiting for her to snap or yell or something, which was odd considering how plotless the movie was. I don't think she detracted from the film at all, though, because maybe the answer doesn't matter. She could be thinking about anything. Maybe she has regrets about her marriage, or resentments towards some of her family members. Maybe she's just having one of those moments where she's questioning everything she's done, wondering, "Do I really want this?" I really don't know. Either way, I felt like I got a glimpse at her soul, seeing her face so much. It's odd to feel this powerful sense of meaning without knowing what it actually means.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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