The Strange Little Cat

Ramon Zürcher was a student at the film school founded by esteemed director Béla Tarr when he made this offbeat debut feature, which is set almost entirely in a small middle-class apartment in Berlin. The narrative, such as it is, is filled with the odd quirks, personality traits, and daily details of life in the apartment as two grown children come back to visit and the family prepares for guests who are coming to celebrate the reunion. Despite the title, the cat is actually the least strange thing in the movie, which features a little sister (Mia Kasalo) who gleefully screams at the top of her lungs every time the blender is turned on, a mother (Jenny Schily) who seems to be off in her own world, an unseen upstairs neighbor who lowers a pail past their window to get groceries, and siblings who fall into old patterns with jokes that make no sense to the viewer. Characters enter and exit, stopping to swap stories that are both mundane and weird in this engaging film that is decidedly more art house than mainstream traditional fare. A celebration of the strange magic of everyday existence and the bizarre dimensions of human behavior that make families at once unique and alike, The Strange Little Cat is refreshingly playful and affectionate rather than satirical or critical. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)