This deft, lightly surreal comedy observes a family going about their domestic business. “There’s a strange music to this light-on-its-toes, rhythmic, and ultimately mesmerizing chamber piece.” — San Francisco Bay Guardian
There’s a strange music to this light-on-its-toes, rhythmic, and ultimately mesmerizing chamber piece.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2013
The Strange Little Cat 2013
Das merkwürdige Kätzchen
The airy vagueness and habitual domestic eccentricities of a middle-class family are choreographed into a lightly surreal perpetuum mobile in this arresting first feature. A seamless ensemble piece staged in the connecting rooms of a small Berlin apartment, it is minimalist in scale but wonderfully nimble in execution. The neighbour has come over to fix the washing machine. Grandma is coming for dinner. Teenage siblings jostle while their baby sister conducts squealing competitions with every electrical appliance in the house. A bottle spins for no apparent reason and the cat is just there. The absurdist funniness is touched with eeriness: it holds you without exactly making you laugh out loud. (There’s a challenge.) “A droll, eventually poignant ballet of domestic discontent. Its seemingly wisp-thin ‘plot’ may confound encapsulation, yet its sum impact defies expectations.” — Dennis Harvey, San Francisco International Film Festival