Friday reviews: 3 November 2023

Bad Behaviour, Cat Person and Loop Track are all in cinemas

For lots of this long life I have always assumed that, when it comes to gendered experience of the world, there was more that was universal than not.

That what separated us gender-wise was on the margins and that our art could reflect that, but also that the best art transcended those differences.

Well, as I get older I realise that is a pretty patriarchal way of looking at the world. A reflection of previously unexamined privilege, if you like.

By way of confirmation of the wrongheadedness of those assumptions, along come two films by women writers and directors that demonstrate that the female experience of the world is, indeed, fundamentally different to mine and my cohorts.

One of those films very much wants us to understand the female point-of-view and the other, I think, doesn't give two hoots about whether people like me get it or not. It’s not for us.

Regardless, men should be paying attention. We might learn something.

Cat Person (written by Michelle Alford from a New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian and directed by Susanna Fogel) is about dating but it’s not a rom-com. In fact, it’s a genre-hopping thriller with comedic, horror and coming-of-age overtones.