Unconventional Structure: She & Her Cat

She & Her Cat is about seeing the character ‘she’ through her cat’s eyes. The short film is narrated by her cat, and it shows what appears to be their entire relationship. We see the cat growing fonder of her near the start of their relationship, and we hear that she received a saddening phone call before she leaves, presumably for ever. There isn’t much of a conflict because these two characters like each other, and nothing is displayed in detail. Because the narrator, our audience surrogate in a way, is a cat, very little detail is given in the plot. When she leaves for work, the cat says that he doesn’t know or care where she goes. She leaves, and she comes back. The short film is straightforward, almost exactly a narration of “this event happened, then this event happened”, with the feelings of the cat interspersed. We see that he gets a girlfriend who is another cat. He doesn’t like her nearly as much as she seems to like him, the only hint of a conflict we’re given. Near the middle of the film, a bit of the story is loosely told in many quick snapshots. Because I can’t read Japanese, I can’t discern what they say, but they don’t seem to move the story along as much as the cat narrator. This short film seems to be about the cat loving and trying to understand his owner. Towards the end of the movie, the cat wants to know the nature of the saddening phone call, and she leaves him in the apartment. The closing line is “This world, we love it” said in tandem by the cat and her, the only time we hear her voice.

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