User Reviews

"Die defekte Katze" or "A Dysfunctional Cat" is a relatively new German 90-minute movie and the first full feature effort for writer and director Susan Gordanshekan briefly before her 40th birthday and after a few short film works. You could say it is a family drama pretty much. It is the story of a man and woman looking for partners and happiness in love relationships and they take the unusual route to marry someone right away, somebody from their culture, and then move right in with this person. So if you read the name of the director and also the names of the protagonists, then you will see that foreign culture is a very big factor in this film. But it was handled the good way. There are no complete escalations in terms of what happens when they decide to get divorced at the end or when the woman goes dancing for example. Both of them have their western aspects. She loves to go swimming too. He is basically living the life os a Western European man working at a hospital, which maybe because of contact with blood would not be appreciated by more fundamental muslims. But it's never really a movie about religion in the first place or which problems could arise from it. It is more about love, unrequited(?), loneliness about friendship, about overcoming boundaries etc. also about obstacles that are inevitable when you move to a new country and don't speak the language. I liked the film for how it never goes for the obvious. For example, in a low quality film, she could have gones for an affair or relationship with the other Iranian man in her language learning course, but she does not really have the intention and neither does he as he wants to help his older wife to become a mother before it is too late, even if he does not love her. So shen she stays at his place eventually, she does not have sex with him, but hears the two having sex with each other. The ending was pretty good too. I thought it was essential for him to fall out of love too for the two to have a(nother) chance. How we see the two really meet like a normal German couple somewhere at a fun location and how he is asking her for another date afterward and after how messed up their wedding was, there seems to be the possibility for a completely new beginning between the two. This also indirectly refers to the cat referenced in the film's title, the animal that virtually stands between them from start to finish and when she is seemingly gone near the end, at leats temporarily is when they get a new chance. She loves the cat, he hates it. The cat is not symbolic for either of the two, but for their relationship, it was born with a defect, created you could say as well, but it hangs in there without being really pleasant, but also not so horrible that it is inevitable to cease because it is not physically damaged in a way that could be life-threatening. but somehow it is not right. The more I keep thinking about it, the more I love this parallel. You could write a whole paragraph about that. So the title is pretty fitting I must say after initially I had no idea what it was about at all. Minor weaknesses are there too, but nothing serious enough to really leave a negative note overall. For example the scene when the colleague tries to kiss the female protagonist, okay I think it is supposed to show that the others have flaws too and may struggle in their marriages, but it felt a bit pseudo-dramatic to me, the essential focus on the two "heroes" would have been enough from start to finish for a film with this running time. And I found it a bit strange that everything goes downhill so quickly after they seem so close at some point and how the kiss at the clinic is used as something that really distracted him (or lets say her presence) so much that he made a crucial mistake that finally costs him his job. That explanation did not work for me I must say. Nonetheless, despite these flaws, this was a pretty good watch, even great on one or two occasions, and I certainly recommend checking this film out. Like I wrote earlier, the key to this becoming a quality movie is how it becomes a quality character study thanks to its subtlety and not going for the obvious because the film never tries to make an important statement on religion and succeed through that alone, which would have been a thankful subject in Germany these days for sure and could have given the film much more attention that it eventually received. However, Gordanshekan took the more complicated, more challenging and more creative route in expressing her art here. Thumbs up for her and the two lead actors. Go watch this movie if you get a chance.