Kristen Roupenian’s New Yorker story about a date gone horribly awry lit a short-lived fire of discourse surrounding gender and power dynamics. Five years later its big screen adaptation arrived, as adapted by Michelle Ashford and directed by Susanna Fogel (The Spy Who Dumped Me). Led by Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun, the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to a tepid response, leading to difficulty securing quick distribution. Some seven months later, it’s now been announced Rialto Pictures will release it in the U.S. on October 6 and now the first trailer has arrived.
I said in my review, “Jones helps elevate the material: her uneasy glances are often more effective than any of the dialogue. Braun, operating in a different, more foreboding register than cousin Greg, handles his character’s emblem of male toxicity with aplomb, particularly in the awkwardly humorous ways his aloofness ignores Margot’s feelings, including a Harrison Ford and Stars Wars obsession that is all too relatable in today’s infantilized society. Every so often the semblance of a promising adaptation peeks beyond the surface, but ultimately it all gets swallowed in a reductive muck of misguided choices that over-explains what the short story left up for discussion. “
See the trailer below.
Cat Person arrives on October 6.