Inverness Film Festival: A Cat Called Dom (-)
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5 stars
This tantalising feature documentary with animation and film reveals so much about its co-directors Will Anderson and Ainsley Henderson – tantalising because it plays with truth and reality. But it also unblinkingly reveals the raw side of dealing with grief and fear after Will’s mother is diagnosed with cancer.
The device is that it is a ‘failed’ film five years in the making for Will’s mum that stalled as the two filmmakers worked on their day-jobs, creating animation that has won them awards and an international reputation and keeps them in demand for new and continuing projects – such as their Pigeons series of shorts shown on BBC Scotland.
The result is that what we – and Will’s mum Susan sees – has been filmed over some time. And it also extends the time frame back, adding in camcorder footage from Will’s childhood, the two at film festivals, at work in the studio, and Will visiting his parents in Alcaig near Dingwall – you glimpse a BAFTA award tucked in beside the Christmas tree, at one point.
It’s during a visit home that Will first hears about his mum’s cancer – from her.
On her way to bed, she asks if he is hungry – we see what a caring mum she is throughout the film, and having got him something to eat, she shares her difficult news, even in that moment trying to soften the shock for Will:
“I’ve got something to tell you, but I’m getting myself tied up in knots about it.
“I went to the dentist and found a lump…. They’re going to do an operation. I’m perfectly chilled about it…”
There’s the sound off-camera of something, maybe Will, falling to the ground…
We fast forward as – looking back to that difficult time – Will speaks.
“It’s so much easier to run away and hide… Another way of using emojis in text messages. I had to put all of my energy into putting life into something… so you make a little friend you can run away with …”
And we meet Dom, who starts as a pulsing black dot (it crosses your mind it's maybe Will imagining the cancer). But soon there's Dom, the poetry-loving animated black cat who teases, irritates and distracts Will from the screen of his laptop, nestling beside clutches of files.
When it comes to creating animated characters, Will and Ainsley are BAFTA winners and masters of the art, from their Pigeons series, to the charismatic Gandhi in Monkey Love Experiments and their latest projects.
A couple of pieces of footage in A Cat Called Dom give clues to how that creative process works as we see them in spontaneous riffs, making each other laugh, dipping into character’s voices.
Then cutting to the duo being interviewed at an animation festival, there’s another clue to their dynamic:
The interviewer says: “It’s like a pendulum swinging through all the films from comedy to pathos.
And Ainsley replies: “I like to poke my fingers in where it hurts and you [Will] want a joke.”
There are scenes which seem to reveal the everyday connections and tensions of two people who work closely, but the film also reveals one tense scene was in fact scripted.
But if it’s interesting to speculate as you watch how much is scripted or ‘real’, there’s no disguising the raw honesty that is also bravely revealed in this playful feature film – and love letter to Will's mother – which takes these talented filmmakers to the next level.
QUOTE:
Dom: You don’t want to spend time with your family, you hid behind your work.
Will: You’re not even real.
Dom: That’s mean.
A Cat Called Dom won the Edinburgh International Film Festival Powell And Pressburger Award back in the summer.
