User Reviews

Wow! A movie that gives you plenty of questions, but no real answers. Leaving it up to the discerning film-goer to make of it what they wish. With me, well-- it has taken me 24 hours to sit right down and write something about this challenging piece of work.

It's not the sudden act of the killing that shocked me, but the way in which the relationship sustained that act to survive. If made by other mindless filmmakers, there would have been loud confrontations, the law would have been involved, as well as the psychiatrists. But we were in the capable hands of Klaus, the writer and director, who handled this horrendous situation with maturity, focusing more on the strength of the relationship.

I will admit that after the first thirty minutes it was getting rather tedious. How many shots of the joyous cat can you have? And the utter love in the human relationship had me envious! It wasn't until the incident that it all came to life. By then I was angry because the director had masterfully drawn me to empathize with the cat (and I'm not much of a cat lover). How could he have done that to the poor defenseless cat? I was yelling at the screen, telling the lover to leave the relationship, and was completely stupefied by his decision not to, and that's why I kept watching, engrossed in the sudden change in this once loving relationship. What made it work was the top-notch performances from the leads, including the cat that we fell in love with.

As for cat lovers, maybe not for you, but if you do watch it, please do so with an open mind because it is not about the killing of a creature, but how a strong relationship sustains such an incident and how the human condition enables us to forgive no matter what.

I feel that the movie was executed fairly well. The actors did a brilliant job in my opinion, however, the content of the film just really annoyed me.

The first 30 minutes showed the passion between the 2 characters, and long footage of the cat going about its day. Lots of full frontal nudity. There was even a scene when the main characters danced with raging erections. I'm in no way a prude, but the sex scene when friend Lorenz watched was a little odd, to me.

OK so Stefan did kill the cat, however I don't think he harboured some inner dark hatred for Moses. From how I see it, Moses bit Stefan on the hand and in a knee jerk reaction, horrifyingly, Stefan broke Moses' neck, which I don't even think he meant to. It may happen if you get a fright, he stood up and it was quick. Stefan was clearly horrified and remorseful at his actions, as could be guessed by the wailing from him that seemed to have gone on forever. To me, it just showed Andreas physically and emotionally abusing Stefan over a fairly long period. Stefan, the poor guy even had a breakdown while playing soccer with his mates. Andreas made Stefan see a psychologist. I don't know whether you were supposed to but I felt myself siding with Stefan.

It wasn't until Stefan fell out of a tree and lost one eye did Andreas show some sort of compassion. Even then Andreas treated Stefan with contempt.

It wasn't until the end of the film did you see Andreas give permission to Stefan to kiss him.

It was a great film, but Andreas' weird obsessive grieving process for Moses was just a little too much for me, and I just wanted to scream at the TV for Stefan to leave him. Andreas was a bully and Stefan had low self esteem issues.

I don't know how they got those cats to do all those cute thing because mine would simply refuse and walk away. Maybe half way into the film a nana second violent action turns the relationship between Moses's housemates up-side-down and the rest of the movie explore the long, long road to forgiveness and attempts at recovering normalcy. It's not that bad, but nothing really spectacular. I was expecting something worse at the end, so was surprised it turned out well after all.

I saw this last night and after it was over I felt manipulated. For the first half of "Tomcat," the director goes to great lengths to show how intimate Stefan and Andreas are, and their relationship is portrayed as almost an ideal one. After the death of the cat (which I'm assuming was killed by Stefan, even though I re-watched the shot three times and couldn't see anything that showed that) the characters seemed to take on completely different personalities. There was absolutely no interaction between the two men to try and understand why it happened or explore each others' feelings about the incident; instead, the film only consists mostly of days going by with Andreas avoiding Stefan, beating up on him, or giving him hateful looks. It's very unlikely that two people in a relationship as close as theirs would continue to avoid any kind of discussion to try and come to terms with what happened or understand each other after something this traumatic occurred. The film may make a point about the "darkness" in each of us, but doesn't follow up with it very realistically.

I thought that a story about the struggle between two gay lovers after their cat dies would be engaging as well as a novel idea. Mind you, the cat is beautiful and the most engaging part of the story, for the short time that he is allowed to live.

My impression is that the two men adopted the cat, named Moses, as a stray, which might explain why they continue to let him run wild outside in the night against the elements. During one of his nocturnal explorations, Moses runs into a small fox; the two animals engage in combat, and Moses ultimately wins but picks up some kind of disease or distemper in the process. This, to me, explains what happens to him soon after.

Some reviewers of this film assume that Stefan, one of the lovers, purposely kills the cat, but Moses seems to die spontaneously as a result of the fox fight. Stefan, however, feels guilty that the cat died in his hands, a problem that gets worse when his lover Andreas suspects Stefan killed the animal.

From there, the plot deteriorates into some of the clichés that *dog* other urbane gay films about urbane gay life: the relentless classical music and smooth jazz, the soul-less dinner parties, the wine, the plush lifestyle, the affluent pretenses, and of course, the sex, which comes across as soft porn and, in one instance, involves a friend who likes to sit beside the bed and watch Andreas and Stefan go at it. Accompanying all of this is mediocre photography and a plodding narrative that needed better editing -- or in this case, gelding.

Only when Andreas and Stefan agree to take care of a friend's adorable white kitten does the story take on genuine horror and tension -- but not because of the director's skill. I just found myself terrified at what might happen to this poor animal in the hands of these two morons whose relationship seems ridiculous and unconvincing and who seem reckless about many things in life.

We are left uncertain about the poor kitten's future, but I wonder what the reaction of the viewing public would be if Moses had been a canine. Would there have been an outcry? Would audiences care so much about whether these two guys end up happy?

A previous film about two gay lovers called "Hawaii" refers to the two men joking about killing a cat in their youth. Still, we are supposed to care about these guys. Something's wrong: cats beware!

The writer got a diagnosis for a faked mental health condition and used it as a key point in this movie. When you see a psychiatrist or psychologist, they will try to figure our a diagnosis for whatever problem you describe, no matter how unlikely your problem is. They aren't going to call you a liar and throw you out of their office. The writer lost all credibility when he described his methods.

I would have accepted the incident as an unfortunate accident, but the writer specifically said that the character deliberately and without provocation did what he did. This upset me so much, I had to walk out of a Q&A session due to his provocative and irresponsible behavior (especially his falsification of a mental illness).

Mental health is a serious topic and mental illness should not be something to fake just to create a more shocking plot development.

"Kater" or "Tomcat" is an Austrian German-language film from 2016 that is pretty long at 2 hours and here we got the second career effort by writer and director Händl Klaus. Don't be mistaken by the title and poster here as this one is not an animal documentary like Kedi, another 2016 film and that one actually is about cats. This one here is really not about cats at all, but the one cat that appears in it during the first half is just means to tell us about the 2 protagonists, a gay couple and they are the owners of the cat in here. Their sexual orientation really isn't much in the focus of the film and this one is not about sexual identification or anything as it could very well have been a man and a woman too. What is in the center though is their relationship from start to finish of this movie. It is an okay character study as a whole, even if I must say that it never really interested or even touched me as I hope it could and that's why all in all I find the awards recognition also exaggerated pretty much. It is a very slow and steady film with the exception of 2-3 haunting moments of escalation that change everything, but then again don't as we find out in the long run. Saying that not too much happens in here would be a bit of a lie and even if it was true, then this could still be a decent watch if the film delivers as a convincing character study and atmospheric full feature film. But in my opinion it comes short in most departments and is a pretty mediocre work with some sequences that felt shocking for the sake of it. Maybe it is also a bit too long for its own good ans with this running time it could have needed 1-2 decent supporting characters that we can care about and not just the couple in the center of it all. Have to give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.