★★★★☆
22 January 2017
A movie review of CATFIGHT. |
“You can be whatever you want, except… you know… this…” Veronica (Sandra Oh)
With a title like that and a male director, immediate thoughts might be concern for some sleazy exploitation movie. CATFIGHT is far from that. It is about two women tearing strips off each physically and emotionally, over years. And it is hilariously excruciating. The fights remind of the FAMILY GUY chicken brawl – they go on for aeons yet are never boring, varying pace and choreography. These ladies are not delicate flowers, they are ambitious, angry and vengeful; and refreshingly unlikeable (though very watchable).
With a title like that and a male director, immediate thoughts might be concern for some sleazy exploitation movie. CATFIGHT is far from that. It is about two women tearing strips off each physically and emotionally, over years. And it is hilariously excruciating. The fights remind of the FAMILY GUY chicken brawl – they go on for aeons yet are never boring, varying pace and choreography. These ladies are not delicate flowers, they are ambitious, angry and vengeful; and refreshingly unlikeable (though very watchable).
Beyond the idea of having non-youthful ladies as leads (how is this still a bold concept in 2017?), and then them not bickering over a guy (how is this still a bold concept in 2017?), there is the prescient political commentary of an impending Trump-like world order. (This premiered in September 2016.) There are fart gags for those worried about anything getting too heavy. For me, they were incongruous and unnecessary. Instead of adding another comedy layer, the occasional toot jape distracted.
Veronica (Sandra Oh) leaves a charmed, snobbish life as a housewife to a war profiteer, Stanley (Damian Young). There is another impending conflict in the Middle East. An alcoholic, Veronica does not want son Kip (Giullian Yao Gioiello) to become an artist. Meanwhile, Ashley (Anne Heche) is a struggling painter, who is not contributing financially to her partner, Lisa (Alicia Silverstone). In the catering trade, Lisa forces Ashley to help with a house party. The squashing of dreams is the thematic seam running through the story.
The two protagonists, Veronica and Ashley, are so quickly set-up as awful people. They also happen to have gone to college together, and are bitter rivals. Not even frenemies. Mutual disdain evolves into unalloyed loathing.
They have not seen one another in years, and of course meet at the soirée. The verbal barbs are followed by brutal fisticuffs, which would not be out of place in Jet Li’s UNLEASHED. What makes the fights even more crunching and wincing is the grounding in some sort of believability.
Veronica ends up losing the initial battle (think a more intimate ‘Battle of the Bastards’ from GAME OF THRONES), perhaps a commentary on the bitterer of the two having more incentive to win. My theory is reinforced as the runtime progresses. In a coma for two years, Veronica wakes to find her family dead, America at war and she impoverished. To mash salt into the wounds, now Ashley is a lauded artist. Amusingly, new-found success has not turned her into a decent person. Ashley’s assistant, Sally (Ariel Kavoussi), takes a regular tongue-lashing. You know more poetic justice is coming. Psychological observations, social commentary and hysterical bile merge.
This is Ridley Scott’s THE DUELLISTS for a modern, far less classical age.