Cat Soup

Cat Soup

Not every film needs clever dialogue or a plot…but it helps. Cat Soup, the half-hour surrealist journey and nothing short of an amazing drug trip. The story follows two adorable cats who quest to find the missing half of the older sister-cat’s soul; from there it derails. A short piece with practically no dialogue, it has won several awards across the world, including “Best Short Film” at the 6th Fantasia Film Festival and “Excellence Prize” at Japan’s Media Arts Festival. Despite its international acclaim, I was surprised at its obscurity here in the states.
Cat Soup’s artistic success became a total surprise for director Mr. Blank. To him, Cat Soup is an animated tribute to a bizarre manga called Nekojiru, which is to Hello Kitty as Bizarro is to Superman. What surprised me was the dry treatment of injury and bloodshed in this film. While the soundtrack creates the ambiance of a child’s bedtime story, there is a significant amount of mutilation. Cat Soup meets many elements right in the center: cuteness and sadism, life and death, creation and destruction. It straddles a strange line between innocence and deviance, particularly for vegetarians or animal rights groups.
Some of the chapters run a little too parallel to the Bible for comfort: the flood of Genesis, the reversal world-destruction of the Book of Revelations, the fat man in bondage from…the Gospel according to Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
Being in the center of so much visual chaos, I can’t say I like or dislike Cat Soup. I wouldn’t have another spoonful without administering certain illegal stimuli, but I won’t discourage you readers from the joy of experimenting.
The jewel of this experimental movement is the imagery, loaded with enough dreamlike surrealism and symbolism to make Freud and Carl Jung soil themselves. Artist Salvador Dali was one of the aesthetic influences, and it shows, especially the sequence in the desert where the two cats hitch a ride inside a water elephant…take that as literally as you can.
Obviously, Cat Soup is not aimed at everyone, or anyone in particular. As director Tatsuo Sato (Ninja Scroll series and Shigofumi: Letters of the Departed) marks in his commentary, “just enjoy the imagery” because “you have to use your brain to watch this” odd, discolored jewel. It is funny in a detached way, cute in a creepy way, and downright confusing in every way. Cat Soup: to be eaten with a knife.