Synopsis
After years of separation, Irena Gallier and her minister brother, Paul, reunite in New Orleans. When zoologists capture a wild panther, Irena is drawn to the cat – and zoo curator Oliver to her. Soon, Paul will have to reveal the family secret: that when sexually aroused, they revert into predatory jungle cats.
Votre Filmothèque
Cast
- Nastassja KinskiIrena Gallier
- Malcolm McDowellPaul Gallier
- John HeardOliver Yates
- Ruby DeeFemale
- Ed Begley Jr.Joe Creigh
- Scott PaulinBill Searle
- Frankie FaisonDet. Brandt
- Annette O'TooleAlice Perrin
- Lynn LowryRuthie
- John LarroquetteBronte Judson
Recommandations
- 88
Chicago Sun-Times
Cat People moves back and forth between its mythic and realistic levels, held together primarily by the strength of Kinski's performance and John Heard's obsession. Kinski is something. She never overacts in this movie, never steps wrong, never seems ridiculous; she just steps onscreen and convincingly underplays a leopard. Heard also is good. - 80
Variety
Paul Schrader’s reworking of the 1942 Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur Cat People is a super-chic erotic horror story of mixed impact. Kinski was essential to the film as conceived, and she’s endlessly watchable. - 75
Slant Magazine
The opening credits immediately insist that director Paul Schrader isn’t interested in merely reprising your grandparents’ beloved version of Cat People, the 1942 horror film memorably directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton. Set to the background of a profoundly bright brick red, which is soon revealed to be a desert jungle-scape, Giorgio Moroder’s primal synth score prepares us for an erotic blowout that overtly literalizes the Cat People conceit for the sake of a little soft porn fun. - 75
Slant Magazine
Unjustifiably compared to the original film upon its release, Schrader’s Cat People is more of an erotic reinvention of the Bodeen story. Though Schrader keeps the Fangoria crowd at bay with a series of grisly tableaus, he remains less concerned with the body-horrific than he does with the rituals of sex—mandatory and otherwise. - 70
The Dissolve
While Cat People feels like an early Bruckheimer production, it’s also permeated with the themes that personify Schrader’s work as a screenwriter and filmmaker: obsession, sex, the strange permutations of destiny, and man’s bottomless capacity for cruelty and violence. - 60
The New York Times
Miss Kinski and Mr. McDowell are most effective - eerie and damned -and Mr. Heard is stalwart and self-effacing as the mere human who stumbles onto the truth and forever guards the secret. - 60
Time Out London
The seductively exotic surface of this mythically underpinned fantasy might be offset for some by much graphic gore, but if you can buy the romantic metaphors for the primitivisms of sexual obsession, the film delivers down the line. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
Director Paul Schrader's dreamlike, stylishly atmospheric remake of Val Lewton's 1942 horror classic needs to be taken on its own terms: viewers who assent to its Freudian logic and creepy sexuality will likely be entranced, but just a little critical distance renders the whole thing irretrievably ludicrous.
