She’s Allergic to Cats
Director: Michael Reich
Writer: Michael Reich
Cast: Mike Pinkney, Sonja Kinski, Flula Borg
Part of: /slash Filmfestival
Seen on: 29.9.2016
[Review by cornholio.]

Plot:
Mike (Mike Pinkney) works as a dog groomer and loves creating analog video art, the only thing that takes him away from the crappy life he leads. Then he meets Cora (Sonja Kinski), the absolute woman of his dreams. Somehow he gathers the courage to ask her out and to his surprise, Cora actually agrees to a date. But their evening out together doesn’t quite go how you’d want first dates to go.

She’s Allergic to Cats started off well enough, but became a little too artsy fo its own good. The bigger problem was that it simply left me completely cold – I rarely felt so much indifference towards a film as this one.

It feels weird to give a SPOILER warning for this film as the title takes the big twist away already, but still, there will be SPOILERs.

The best thing about the film, for me, was actually Mike’s video art. While it may not be the work of the next Picasso, it was interesting and fun to look at, making me wish that the film would have spent more time on it.

But instead the film focuses on the date night and on Mike himself and that’s where the problems started. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me why Cora would want to go on a date with Mike. Yeah, there can be a certain kind of charm to ineptness and awkwardness, but that was never felt on screen. Instead it seemed to me more like the film didn’t think about that at all. The reasoning seems to be if Mike can get up the courage to ask her, of course she’ll go out with him. Women are just waiting for an opportunity like that.

But then Cora is literally too stupid to live, so maybe I shouldn’t expect too much of her. But seriously, if I had a cat allergy that was so strong that it would kill me practically instantly when coming in contact with a cat, you bet your ass I’d ask every person whose house I may or may not enter whether they have a cat or have recently seen a cat in their garden or whatever. But not Cora. If she had been smart about this, there wouldn’t have been a film and Mike wouldn’t have more man pain, and the world would probably have been better for it.

Cora’s behavior is not the only thing that left me scratching my head. I don’t understand why Mike wouldn’t just simply throw away the bananas, for example, and get rid of the rat shit. Take pictures of the mess as proof to the landlord and you don’t have to live in squallor.

But all of this sounds way angrier than I actually felt about the film. The film mostly left me feeling vaguely empty. Except for Karma the pug.

Summarizing: nah.