A couple of years after it debuted in the US, Peter Bogdanovich's The Cat's Meow finally gets a theatrical release on this side of the world. A character driven piece of work, The Cat's Meow is a fictionalised take on what happened on William Randolph Hearst's yacht, the Oneida, which left Los Angeles on November 15 1924. Aboard the tycoon's yacht that day were a selection of friends, enemies and lovers, including his mistress Marion Davis (Dunst), Charlie Chaplin (Izzard), gossip columnist Louella Parsons (Tilly) and Hollywood producer Thomas Ince (Elwes), whose birthday was being celebrated by the guests. Over the course of a couple of days, Heart's suspicions grew that his much younger lover Davis was conducting an affair with Chaplin, while his paranoia was stoked by others with Machiavellian intentions.
A sombre, restrained piece of work, The Cat's Meow is an intelligent conjecture on what might have provoked the death of one of the guests in mysterious circumstances. Essentially a dig at the timeless vacuous nature of celebrity culture and what drives those who seem to have it all, The Cat's Meow doesn't spare any of its characters. Although it is speculation, due to the fact that none of the guests ever revealed what really happened abroad the Oneida, Bogdanovich etches his characters in neatly defined strokes, detailing their individual failings as well as those of the industry in which they worked. As the film is so dependent on the interactions between its characters, the pace may be considered a little too stately for some, but The Cat's Meow is worth the effort.
