A Cat in Paris Review

A Cat In Paris:

     As a die hard animation fan, I make it a goal to see all the films nominated for best animated feature at the academy awards.  This year was an anomaly as I hadn’t seen any of the nominees before the show.  Thankfully a few months later, Netflix had put up the two foreign films, “A Cat in Paris” and “Chico and Rita” for instant streaming and I decided to finally give them a whirl.

     “A Cat in Paris” was an interesting film.  While there was nothing in it that I would say deemed it “adult animation” thematically, it definitely wasn’t a movie for kids.  The story is centered on three main characters, a police woman named Jeanne who lost her husband in an incident a few years ago, her daughter Zoey, and a thief named Nico who robs houses at night.  Throughout the duration of the film, these three seemingly unrelated characters’ lives are slowly drawn together through a cat.  The cat is Zoey’s pet cat who lives with her and her mom during the day and explores the rooftops with Nico at night.  This cat is an entirely silent character but has a lot of personality in its movements and expressions.  I won’t spoil any more of the film but I will say that the cat is instrumental in brining the three of them together as well as bringing to light the man responsible for the death of Zoey’s father and his group of ragtag villains.  It’s a dark, spirited tale that only the French could tell and plays well with the style of animation the movie presents.

     And what would an animated movie be without style?  “A Cat in Paris” is rife with it, boasting an art direction blending the likes of Little Nino’s Pizzeria and the cartoons of the New Yorker.  It is colorful, atmospheric, and moody and the saturate colors do a great job showing the abstract Paris the film depicts.  The film does a good job showing the world it presents through the eyes of both Zoey and the adult characters.  Zoey’s room is bright and saturate while later in the movie there are some bizarre and somewhat disturbing Salivor Dali-esque dream sequences that add to the dark nature of her mother’s loss.  This mixture of extreme stylistic choices works well for the film and the art direction is probably my favorite part of the movie.

     The English voices are good but what remains slightly... misplaced is the English dialogue which seems like it’s trying to be witty but never quite hits its mark.  Perhaps it’s just something that didn’t translate well from the original French but it’s noticeable and ruins the otherwise perfect atmosphere the movie presents.  The other thing that I noticed was the film’s length.  At a mere 70 minutes, the film feels short but at the same time I felt it slowed in the middle as well.  Neither of these was a bad thing overall, it just felt like there were some pacing issues.  It’s also a movie I probably wouldn’t buy because it doesn’t have a lot of replay value.

     All that said, you can only see one of the five animated films nominated for Best Animated picture this year I think “A Cat in Paris” should be the one.  I enjoyed it much more than the quirky “Rango” and a lot more than Dreamworks’ “Puss N Boots”.  Despite its faults, it’s still an enjoyable romp through the rooftops of Paris.

3.5 out of 5.