by Linda Kay

Starring: Noochie

Directed by: Eva Victor

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: A look at the life of graduate student Agnes (Eva Victor) whose promising trajectory seems questionable when she is unexpectedly violated.

Kitty Cameo: The film is told out of order with the early scenes focusing on Agnes living alone near the college where she is now a literary professor. Her former fellow student and close friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) comes to visit and share some news. We see that Agnes owns a gray tabby cat named Olga who appears in a few of these scenes.

The film then goes back to when Agnes was a student and how she deals with what happens to her. In one scene she is walking down the street when she spots a gray tabby kitten.

Agnes picks up the kitten and hugs her. In just a few seconds she proclaims, “I guess, um . . . yep, I love you,” and asks the kitten if she wants to accompany her to get coffee.

In the next scene, Agnes is holding the kitten inside her jacket in a grocery store asking the tiny kitty which food she wants.

There is a tense moment when Agnes turns and sees who she thinks was her former professor, then relaxes when she realizes it is not him.

As Agnes is checking out, the clerk (Francesca D’Uva) accuses her of bringing a cat into the store. Agnes denies this while the kitten is sticking her head and paws out of the jacket, all the time Agnes is feebly trying to hide the kitten with her hands.

Upon arriving home she announces to Lydie that she got a cat. “Whatever you need,” Lydie states respectfully.

Agnes is in bed with the kitten in the next scene.

The kitten Olga is shown only one more time, watching as Agnes tapes pages from her thesis to the window.

When the film jumps to the future again, grown Olga appears one more time when Agnes removes some of the pages from her thesis from the window, although there is a later scene where Olga kills a mouse and leaves it on Agnes’ bed but we do not see Olga in that scene, we only hear her yowls.

The credits list Noochie the cat as playing Olga, but it isn’t clear whether Noochie was the kitten or the adult version of Olga. The animal wrangler on the movie was Marisa Bellis from Acting Like Animals. The kitten was featured prominently on posters for the movie.

A lovely art print from a painting by Jospeh Jones is also available for sale from production company A24’s website.

Director and star Eva Victor even made a video assuring viewers that no harm will ever come to a cat in her films.

Final Mewsings: The cat distribution system knows exactly who to choose.

Many thanks to Ted Davis for letting us know about the cat in this film.

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