MEOW!

Is there a line between surrealism and just plain silly? There must be, but how do you tell? Would there even be a line, or would it be a lobster or something? It seems a contradiction that such a border might dare exist. It is an issue when one has next to no idea what they just watched. That was me having viewed Meow!, a surreal short about a Prague toilet attendant pining for a lost cat. I think… 

In order to interpret this, I looked up the producers in case an overt manifesto or position within an artistic movement explained their motivations. In this case, they are The Threepenny Collective, a London and Prague-based outfit with a focus mainly on theater, with film perhaps something of an outlier for them. They don’t have any ax to grind or philosophy to espouse that I could see, rather existing purely for the companionship and fun of creating.

“…a Prague toilet attendant pining for a lost cat. I think…”

None of which helped me understand the film. What helped was the synopsis on their website. This is just as well as the film itself is mainly inscrutable even though the story, as strange as it is, is really very simple; A toilet attendant (Paige Janey Thomas) has lost her cat and has to resort to selling feet pics to an underground society of hunchbacks to track it down. Yeah, it is the sort of warped adventure that would do well to spell itself out slowly rather than just boil up the erratic stockpot full of madness they present here.

But it’s silly fun that makes good use of the wintry setting of Prague, especially the more gothic architecture. These guys seem to be all about the gothic. Their earlier 8mm film released this year as part of the Straight Eight challenge, Love Bites, had a vampire lurking on a train at sunset.

The costumes by Noemi Fintor are simple yet excellent. The set design by Barnaby Harber-Wincott is whimsically cluttered and striking. The two leads do a decent job. Thomas is lively and fun as the toilet attendant, but her role is undermined by a lack of attention in the script and direction. Raphael Ruiz fares better as the hunchback, as he has an easier job just looking mysterious, nicely channeling his inner Lon Chaney. The wildness of the piece could have used a more sober, considered approach to story, but it’s all good fun.