Chatty Catties - QUEERGURU

For his debut feature film L.A. based artist and writer Pablo Valencia used his rather deranged imagination to risk making an extraordinary innovative black comedy that he almost manages to pull off.

This story is of an aspiring filmmaker called Shelby who has more than her fair share of emotional issues and substance abuse and who talks her ‘issues’ through with her cat. Luckily for her, Leonard can not only talk back, but he’s got a much better grasp
of reality than she has. When Shelby has the unexpected good fortune to date a cute young man called Nate, Leonard does everything he can to make the relationship work, for when Nate is around life is so much better for him. However it will take much more than this clever cat to stop Shelby eventually pushing the self-destruct button like she does on everything good that happens to her.

Her relationship with Leonard has always been strained as she forces him into being the subject of the rather dire home movies she insists on making, and he is both embarrassed and annoyed beyond belief when she forces his/her new friend Nate to watch them.

There are other plot diversions with clips of random cats talking to their owners which are very funny even though they sit rather awkwardly alongside the main story.

Valencia, who co-wrote the story, very acutely makes the cats the real stars of the piece as in some cases they are much better actors than the humans. The fact that their voices are lent by a talented team of deaf and hard-of-hearing performers (led by John Autry II who’s an excellent Leonard) adds an intriguing dimension to this very likable quirky movie.

As exasperated as one feels (just like Leonard) about the sheer silliness of this film, it’s hard not to be taken with its ingenuity and it is so full of such promise that it will be interesting to discover as to what its creator will come up with next.