cat people: sex, death and repression

*SPOILER ALERT*

It's impossible to examine the body of Paul Schrader's work without touching on his early Calvinism. It is everywhere, manifest most fully in the intensity of sex and the strange and violent shapes into which it draws us, and in the effects of repression, and the strange and violent shapes into which THAT draws us. Think of Taxi Driver, Hardcore, Mishima, and now think of Cat People, which may, in fact, be the most emblematic of this central pillar of his oeuvre.

Yes, I saw it at the theatre when I was a teenager, of COURSE I did; I was uncomfortable with the Malcolm McDowell character's lack of subtlety and Schrader's unflinching over-reliance on both the coltish nubility of Nastassja Kinski and Annette O'Toole's girl-next-door hotness. In retrospect, the bold choices, although a good half fall flat, are refreshing for their sheer outrageousness.

The basis is this: in unspecified Olden Times, through nebulous means (we are told one story, but shown another), humans and great cats joined to form a new species, the genes of which pass down through a family line. The line is physiogenetically protected by the crazy but effective proposition that if a cat-human has sex with a regular human, the cat-human will change into his/her cat-self and cannot regain human shape until it has killed. This ensures a sort of ongoing Pharaonic dynasty of sister-brother couplings along with lots of partially-eaten, post-coital corpses.

New Orleans is a perfect setting for such hyper-Gothic strangeness, and Ruby Dee is marvellous in her tignon-sporting, Marie-Laveauish, Priestess-of-the-Cat-God role. (The best line in the piece may be her parting advice to the just-burgeoning cat-girl: "Go and pretend the world is as men think it is.") As opposed to the unique Val Lewton original, this version uses real cats: gorgeous, sensuous black panthers (for that select clique of us for whom Passion in the Desert was made). It also has a heartily good supporting cast, led by the never-disappointing O'Toole and Ed Begley Jr, the two of whom provide a benchmark of good-spirited, normal-life, robust haleness away from which the dour, vampiric power-sex can blossom and spread like a poisonous vine.

The photography and editing veer so wildly between sinuous sylishness and utter banality as to inspire a mild seasickness. Likewise, Kinski seems at first awkward and uncomfortably exposed before the camera, but in the end it seems it was her character, clumsily pretending "that the world is as men think it is," because as she grows to accept her malkin nature, she is increasingly magnetic to its (and our) gaze. Look at this wonderful, weird moment: her human boyfriend (John Heard) has taken her to his cabin on the bayou to court her. She refuses his sexual advances, but in the night rises and, after looking hungrily on him, walks naked into the swampland to chase and kill a rabbit. We cut back to Heard, wakened by his screen-door shutting. He switches on the lantern and she, naked and bloodied, smashes it, screaming, "Don't look at me!"

And here is another: after she has allowed him to make love to her, she watches her body, wondering if the change will come, then walks into the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror. I feel fairly comfortable in speaking for my entire gender in generalizing that most of us do this after losing our virginities. What's different is the next moment: she reaches down and finds blood between her legs, instinctively paints it across her mouth, then, realizing what she has done, wipes it guiltily away. This is all to say that, when released from the more pedestrian sections of the film, Kinski is fascinating, and not just in her much-vaunted sex appeal. She communicates a darkness and vulnerablity which together suggest a numinous, dark-goddess force trying to emerge from beneath centuries of repression. I'm not suggesting Cat People is a feminist tract, certainly; I remember even in my youth wincing inwardly at the final scenes of her sacrifice and his domination. Still, almost in spite of the script, there are strong women here, not just Kinski but O'Toole as well, in a time (the eighties) when women's power onscreen was faltering (OK, when is it not?) and trying to find new footing.

Although it's got the typical '80s synth-soundtrack going on, there's also a haunting theme song by David Bowie, which Giorgio Moroder uses as a pulsating underscore throughout to mesmerizing effect.