Review of A Cat in Paris (2010) by Edith N — 07 Nov 2012

Toulouse-Lautrec Meets Hitchcock Meets Bill Peet.

The problem with streaming online, one of the things which will have to be improved before a hypothetical total replacement of physical media, is that I didn't get to choose whether to watch this in French or English. In fact, there are apparently two English-language dubs, one for American markets and one for British markets. Netflix, obviously, chose the American one. But I would have liked to have had the choice for myself. It was a fine dub. Goodness knows I've seen worse. But I tend towards purism in my foreign-language films, and I can't help wondering if the reason that this is only available dubbed is because it's in the Animation Ghetto--or the Kids' Movie Ghetto. There is, of course, considerable overlap between the two, though they are not so identical as many people think. However, either way, Netflix doesn't even seem to understand how obsessive people watching their anime selections might well be.

Zoé (Lauren Weintraub) has a cat, Dino. Her cat stays around Zoé when Zoé is awake, bringing her presents of dead lizards and such, as cats are wont to do. However, at night, it instead goes out and follows around Nico (Steve Blum), a sneak thief. One night, he gives the cat a bracelet, which the cat passes on to Zoé. Her mother, Jeanne (Marcia Gay Harden), sees it and realizes that the cat has something to do with the recent string of robberies--Jeanne is a cop. However, she has more important things to worry about at the moment. Jeanne's husband was killed by a criminal named Victor Costa (JB Blanc), and Jeanne and the rest of the detectives are closing in on him. However, Jeanne is being spied on by Claudine (Anjelica Huston), Zoé's nanny. Costa is hoping to steal a large and famous statue, Jeanne is hoping to catch him before he can, and Zoé has not spoken since her father's death and just wants everything back to normal.

I have this list I've been collecting for some years now of subtitled movies to start your kids on, to encourage them in the belief that it's okay to "read a movie." Some of them are animated, and some are live action. They're all movies made for kids, and none of them have English as their original language. Spanish, Mongolian, Japanese, French--all over the world. Some of them are comedies, and some of them are dramas. This one will definitely be making that list, even though the dub is pretty decent. Heck, I might even consider it useful as an early teaching tool--this is the difference between subbed and dubbed. You can like dubbed better, even, if it's dubbed well. However, you should know the difference if you're really going to know about movies. And, yeah, I do think kids can know about movies. I think kids can [i]learn[/i] about movies, to be able to know the difference between good and bad. I don't think we need to talk down to them, and I don't think being bad is an automatic assumption about kids' movies.

Another thing worth realizing about this movie is that Zoé is absolutely charming, and she's also got some pretty serious problems. She is another example of The Movie Kid Who Probably Ought To Be In Therapy. She probably doesn't have PTSD, unless there's more to her father's death than we know, but she's obviously having a very hard time processing her grief. Her mother is processing her own by going out of her way to catch Costa, which is surely worthy. However, you've got to figure she can't know Claudine very well, and yeah, a lot of kids have babysitters. Heck, a lot more kids are in daycare, and it's clear Zoé isn't ready for daycare. But just sort of hoping she'll come out of it? That's not going to solve much. Everyone is lucky that things work out the way they end up doing, because Zoé could come out of the whole thing so much more scarred than she does, and either way, there's no way to be sure that another shock would cancel out the first one.

In French, the movie is actually called [i]The Life of a Cat[/i]. It's an American Thing that we need to be told when our movies are foreign. You routinely get people complaining about subtitles, not aware before they went in that the movie was foreign. Or the signs in theatres informing audiences that, yes, [i]The Artist[/i] was a silent movie. Even without having seen it, I did not expect this movie to win Best Animated Feature. I expected an American movie to win. ([i]Rango[/i], as it happens, and I was right.) However, I also expected this movie to be charming, and I expected a movie I wouldn't mind seeing again. French animation, while not entirely exempt from Weird Damn French Crap, tends to be strong on the whimsy. There is also often nostalgia, and there's a lot of pulling on the artistic history of France. I must admit that Toulouse-Lautrec is not necessarily the artist I'm thinking of whose work this resembles, and it's limited to the poster art, but still. A beautiful, sweet, charming movie.