She's Allergic to Cats (2016)

 

Director: Michael Reich

Screenplay: Michael Reich

Cast: Mike Pinkney as Mike pinkney; Sonja Kinski as Cora; Flula Borg as Sebastian; Veronika Dash as Nancy; Honey Davis as Honey

An Abstract Candidate

 

What, demon cats you’re saying?

Made like a modern, multimedia anxiety, Mike pinkney (Mike Pinkney) is a young man living in Hollywood, wanting to make films and creating video art lamenting his life in his spare time, having to make his income by grooming dogs for celebrities. He also wants to remake Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) with cats, i.e. not some unholy musical hybrid from the Andrew Lloyd Webber work with an anthropomorphic John Travolta, but recasting Sissy Spacek with a Persian cat. Obviously, there is a post-ironic absurdity to the proceedings, but director-writer Michael Reich’s film is a chronicle of a mental breakdown, even if it is clear there is humour to this with a prolonged scene dealing with squeezing the anal glands of dogs, which viewers will have to sit through real examples of. Salvation is offered for Mike by a female client named Cora (Sonja Kinski), an assistant to Mickey Rourke’s daughter, who has as chemistry with him and decide to go on a date. He is coasting in existence however, and the rat infestation in his home he needs to deal with before she arrives for date night requires drastic action.

It is tinged with a sarcasm, where his producer is more concerned, when pitched the Carrie remake, that he has never heard of the original film nor the Stephen King novel, but the film undercuts this with moments of the sinister, such as this figure named Sebastian (Flula Borg) suddenly start to talk like a demon at the racquetball court. The best comparison is the “Infomercials” produced and screened by Adult Swim, the adult targeted programming block broadcast by the American basic cable channel Cartoon Network, where they produced works which are meant to be absurd, but with entries like Too Many Cooks (2014) cutting the jokes with conclusions which eventually get into horror. This is more psychodrama in mode, yet the same rules apply, where there is a serious subject in its centre, but there is a prolonged scene, to cause awkwardness, in the locker room afterwards with a man’s bared penis in the centre of shot. There is this sense of bordering on being funny but too weird to laugh is a constant factor here, both to cringe and feel disjointed. This juxtaposition of tonal whiplash does fit the breakdown in Mike, and whilst this cannot afford showing scenes of Carrie, the obvious metaphor of another Travolta film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976), a made-for-TV film in which, born with immune system issues, Travolta plays a young man who has had to live in a n incubator-like conditions, represents the sense Mike is trapped in his own world even if this plays to deadpan absurdity. The tragedy is there even when he laments at multiple points that he no longer has bananas because the rats ate them.

In structure, this is equivalent of a short story, where the choice which will doom him is a tiny one which is magnified, that he decides to “borrow” from his employment a cat Rosemary to hunt the rats, a cat dubbed vicious by a colleague. What happens in reality is openly stated in the title of the film, the source of where things will go wrong, but the build is more character driven. At first Cora seems to be someone who may be entirely in his own head, as at first her face is mostly obscured on purpose to suggest something is amiss. She is revealed, when clearly a real person, as someone with a complicated psychological back-story of her own, with the shock if you know who Sonja Kinski’s family tree is adding something even unintentionally. The daughter of acclaimed actress Natasha Kinski, thus Sonja Kinski is also the granddaughter of the acclaimed and notorious Klaus Kinski, as known for his off-screen personality (with director Werner Herzog especially) as much as onscreen; whilst this should not cast a shadow over the proceedings, this befits a family which have had distinct and idiosyncratic filmographies between them, and her proper introduction does add a lot more to the film considerably. 

Once Kinski appears and allows Mike Pinkney to interact in their characters, this film despite playing up to ironic wackiness also at the same time becomes a short story toned piece about alienation, based on events that have no basis in producing plot incident but delving into the characters. Sadly it does involves a joke on the lost dog poster that plays a plot point, about transgender people which has no aged well at all, the one real blight on the film as an ironic joke than done to question a character even writing that on the poster looking for the dog. Beyond this however, everything involving said dog, a missing pug named Karma, is without issue, a catalyst for the depth this starts to bring in when the dog makes an onscreen appear. This passage about Karma, when found by the leads, is a shift in drama. It allows these characters to show their own disconnect issues as they, trying to get the dog back to its owner, end up together talking when they decide to break in to complete this virtuous mission, including Cora’s tale as a child of teaching baby ducks to swim in a paddling pool which has a disconcerting end to where the narrative finishes.

It is here where the ironic humour, needing knowledge of pop culture of the YouTube poop video or the Nostalgia Critic, may help appreciate the film, as the man we never see and whose home they break into has a DVD collection entirely about talking animals. I have also found, however, having little context adds to certain works, in context, when even if the references have no grounded form, they became part of the tapestry. The discussion on Howard the Duck (1986) alone is weird, about a topless female duck humanoid with breasts, before you even realise that was a real scene, a brief moment, in a film produced by George Lucas just after the first Star Wars films. Even as the central couple are discussing that real ducks do not have nipples, it is contextually about people who are surrounded by this pop culture and trying to gauge their growing romance underneath this construct. In terms of actual pop culture with meaning for myself, it was actually amusing Congo (1995) is an integral work to an emotional beat, at least as held up as a stolen DVD by Kinski in the rain, especially as I do like that film for its flaws.

Interlacing video layered footage together with this drama also leads a disconcerting edge to Allergic..., especially as it plays to using digital artifice and VHS flaws. The aspect involving the cats and the dog grooming footage, evoking Everything is Terrible!'s DoggieWoggiez! PoochieWoochiez! (2012) in layering footage, is clearly absurd as much as playing to cute animal videos; the Carrie remake is shown, with the famous bucket of blood scene recreated ,by a cat getting the pig’s blood on her through a homemade image layering video project. As Michael’s breakdown continues, and everything is going to end in tears, the more this is involved, including the suggestion of people being possessed by cats, this artifice increasing more and more to the breaking point. That is not including scenes, posing the lead actors or layering, which juxtapose them to ordinary likes art pieces, surreal for the sake of this, but with at least the creative spark with the choices, especially as we are factoring in, in the editing, they represent the thoughts and anxieties of Mike our lead trying to get on with life, slowly becoming more weird and loosing grip with these images exhibiting this. She’s Allergic to Cats will be an acquired taste, undeniably kooky and accused for doing it on purpose to the detriment of the film’s tone, such as a gag of Michael literally falling face first into dog faeces, but the humour is laced with a discontent which becomes more pronounced as the film eventually finishes, not with a bang, but a literal meow.

Abstract Spectrum: Disturbing/Eccentric/Ironic/Wacky

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low