by Mark Murton and Linda Kay

English Title: When the Cat’s Away

Starring: Arapimou

Directed by: Cedric Klapisch

This review contains a Severe Kitty Carnage Warning!

Cat Out Of The Bag Alert! This review contains MAJOR spoilers for this film.

Synopsis: When Chloe (Garance Clavel), a young woman living a lonely and unfulfilled life in the Bastille area of Paris, goes on holiday she entrusts her beloved cat, Gris Gris, to madame Renée (Renée Le Calm), the elderly and well-meaning neighbourhood crazy cat woman. But on her return Chloe finds Gris Gris has gone missing, forcing her to overcome her shyness as she engages with a variety of quirky characters and rediscovers herself and the area she lives in.

Featured Feline: The film opens with Chloe at the apartment she shares with her gay friend, Michel (Olivier Py), trying to arrange for someone to look after Gris Gris while she is away for the week.

Packing Gris Gris into his basket, Chloe goes out to try and find someone to look after him. Soon after leaving, she encounters a woman walking the other way cradling her own cat in her arms.

Chloe approaches numerous acquaintances, but each time is passed on to someone else. Eventually Chloe is directed to the home of madame Renée where she and Gris Gris receive a warm welcome.

Kitty Cameos: Madame Renée informs Chloe she already has “six cats, more or less,” but is quite happy to accommodate one more.

Having enjoyed her holiday Chloe returns to collect Gris Gris only to be told by a distraught madame Renée that Gris Gris has run off. Madame Renée introduces Chloe to her neighbour Djamel (Zinedine Soualem) who agrees to help her put up Missing Cat Posters. Michel helps, too.

Chloe continues with her life, going back to work, and even having a night out, but Gris Gris is never far from her thoughts and one day she visits the local shelter and sits with the cats there.

Kitty Carnage Warning! Then, out of the blue, she gets a call from a friend of madame Renée who thinks she may have found Gris Gris. However, Chloe is warned that the cat she has found is dead. The three women visit the site and Chloe is relieved to discover it isn’t Gris Gris, although they feel bad for the deceased kitty.

As the three women walk back to madame Renée’s they are shocked to find out that Djamel has climbed onto the roof of the apartment building in pursuit of a cat (presumably in an attempt to impress Chloe with whom he has clearly become besotted). Chloe races up the stairs to a top floor window to beg Djamel to leave the cat and come back in, but just at that moment he triumphantly holds up a grey cat. His triumph is short lived as he suddenly loses his footing and drops the cat as he slips down the roof and has to cling to the gutter for dear life until rescued by the fire service.

Later, learning that madame Renée is ill, Djamel and Chloe go to visit her and find her in bed with her little dog at her side and a cat in her arms, plus another stretched out on the furniture behind them next to a radio cassette player.

Convincing madame Renée she should eat something they retire to the kitchen to fetch some soup. In the kitchen the Siamese is sat on the fridge.

Suddenly Chloe instructs Djamel to be quiet as she strains to hear something. A cry from one of madame Renée’s other cats high on a shelf distracts her momentarily.

But she continues to listen and is convinced she can hear Gris Gris crying from behind the cooker. Meanwhile, Djamel has moved to the doorway (with the cat still sleeping soundly by the radio cassette) and admonishes madame Renée for allowing a cat to be lost in her apartment for twelve days.

Back in the kitchen, Chloe gently fishes Gris Gris out from behind the cooker. Gris Gris appears unharmed by his ordeal, if far from happy.

The final cat scene mirrors the first with Chloe back at home on the sofa with Gris Gris.

Behind the Scenes

Despite being lost behind the stove for much of the film the cat playing Gris Gris is fifth billed in the end credits. It has been reported that the cat actor, Arapimou, was the actual pet of actress Garance Clavel, which would explain their on screen chemistry.

The word gris means grey in French, and a running joke throughout the film is people commenting on how the cat is not, in fact, grey but black. In Creole, gris gris refers to a voodoo amulet or talisman capable of warding off evil. Historically it could also mean to bewitch. It was also the title of a 1968 album released by New Orleans artist Dr. John. One reviewer even went so far as to speculate the name referred to the fact that the cat is the story’s Éminence grise (someone operating behind the scenes who operates the happenings around them unseen). The story behind the cat’s name is never explained in the movie itself, so the viewer can use their own imagination to decide the story behind the name.

As Anne Billson explained in her wonderful review of the film for her blog Cats on Film (and expanded upon in the print version, which we highly recommend for all movie and cat lovers) the literal translation of the title is Everyone is Looking for Their Cat, which is a far more appropriate moniker than the meaningless English title which has already been used countless times before.

Arapimou not only got high billing in the credits and credited by name in many print reviews, she also appeared on various posters and DVD releases for the film.

Final Mewsings: Cats don’t consider themselves missing so they have no need to “find themselves”.

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