Booger
He was unexpected and unasked for, Booger, the fluffy black cat who one day showed up in the apartment shared by best friends Anna and Izzy and decided to stay, his exit as unprompted as his arrival, biting Anna on the hand then jumping out the open window, Anna’s sense of loss amplified by the recent sudden death of Izzy which she has not processed, struggling to express her grief and function in her daily life and responsibilities.
Failing to show up at work, refusing to engage with her landlord about the unpaid half of the rent, combative with her boyfriend Max when he tries to offer sympathy or support, Anna instead obsesses over the missing cat, even taking on aspects of the feline, sleeping all hours in strange places, seeking out moving sunbeams, lapping water, grooming herself and coughing up furballs rather than expunging her grief which festers like the unhealed bitemarks.
The feature debut of writer and director Mary Dauterman, the titular Booger is played by two enigmatic and undeniably beautiful beasts of luxurious coat, Bobby and Stewart, while the human roles are carried by Grace Glowicki as Anna, Sofia Dobrushin as Izzy, Garrick Bernard as Max and Gazer‘s Marcia DeBonis as Joyce, broken but determined to celebrate the memory of her daughter, all of them treated with equal disdain by Anna.
Far from becoming a wild and feral cat woman in her semi-transformation, Anna manifests as a spoiled domestic moggie, uncooperative, demanding, ungrateful, surly and unmanageable, eventually losing both her home and her job on the same day before getting drunk about it on the contents of a stolen tip jar, the very definition of the crazy cat lady minus the cat, though not so far gone as Ellen (Welcome to the Dollhouse’s Heather Matarazzo), overzealous pet store owner turned impromptu counsellor.
The pieces in place for an examination of loss, grief, displacement behaviours and the cost of repressing these genuine emotions, while the premise and performances of Booger cannot be faulted, particularly that of DeBonis, with endless indulgent reviews of old Instagram posts, bouts of bad karaoke and wandering the streets, the languid pacing and meandering path may resemble the behaviour of a cat but engaging cinema it does not make.
Released on Blu-ray by Arrow, their edition of Booger is supported by two video essays, A Different Breed of Female Feline from Kat Hughes, considering the history of women and cats in cinema through Island of Lost Souls, Cat People and Sleepwalkers and beyond, and Curiosity Kills from Alexandra West, a history of cats in culture and mythology, venerated in Egypt, vilified in the dark ages as symbolic of evil, but now seen as valued companions.
Booger will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Films on Monday 7th April
