Felidae (1994)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

In many a German movie, dark themes of Holocaust, experimentation and Nazi ideology lurk beneath the surface. If there is a Grandpa with dark secret, whatever it is, it is a sublimation of the one who had not much fun in Stalingrad, and it is an almost uniquely German experience. Having been guilty for uspeakable inhumanity of the Holocaust and rarely discussed aggression and genocide of the Slavs, and counting such people as Dr Mengele as their greats, Germans have a dark cynical streak that almost comes off as humor. At least, that part of self aware honesty was still present in 1994, before the Merkel years and renewed expansionism. This little cartoon is a wonderful animation of a bestseller novel by a Turkish German guest worker and writer, that strikes chords of this kind of German sickness but in the world of cats or uber-cats. Turks have a fondness for cats (as immortalized by the documentary about Istambul cats) as Islam treats dogs with less than respect, and in Germany ubermen are "in" again, despite through denaz ification, only pushed beneath the surface, into subconsciousness so to speak. Combine the two basic ideas and you get this darkly fun cartoon with a bit of mystery. Entertaining to watch, but ultimately nothing can beat the real thing and many many skeletons in the closets of the humorless but sickly amusing psyche of Germans past and present.

I learned about this film on YouTube while watching "The Plague Dogs" (apparently I'm not alone) and decided to give it a watch. I read some information about it beforehand, so I was more or less prepared for the adult content when I saw it, and I was pleasantly surprised by the level of violence and darkness in an animated film. I always enjoy films that challenge the concept that animation = for kids. Animation is an art style, not a genre, and can be just as much for adults as for children.In short, Felidae is not a children's film. It contains sex, gore, violence, and so on. I find it surprising, though, how so many people comment on the mating scene--which lasts only a matter of seconds and is done quite subtly--but I have seen hardly any mention of the sexual artwork displayed on the wall in several scenes--artwork that clearly shows the genitals of nude humans having sex. I would have expected the latter to get more attention for "inappropriateness." There are a lot of other sexual references throughout the film, but as I said before, this is an adult film and so the sexual content is both acceptable and reasonable within the story.On a different note, speaking as the owner of four cats and someone who has had occasion to observe cat sex in real life, I can say the scene (and the film in general) is a rather accurate portrayal of cat behavior (the human-like qualities aside, of course.) Although I did think the gore in some parts was a bit excessive, but I like how the makers of the film went for a more realistic look instead of "dumbing it down." When an animal is ripped open, there's going to be a decent amount of blood and possibly guts showing, and drawing minimal gore would give the image less of an impact. I don't think any part was really too extreme or upsetting for the what the film was trying to do. There were only two scenes that were particularly disturbing to me personally: the experimentation scene because I know it's a real thing and the second nightmare with the puppet corpses because of the surreal appearance.The voice acting matched the characters and tone of the story quite well (I watched the German version with subtitles which, since I'm trying to learn German, had the added bonus of being good practice material). I did look at some clips of the English version, and although Francis' voice is a little too squeaky for my taste, the English voices were also pretty good.I have not read the book, so I can't speak about the effectiveness of the adaptation, but by itself, I enjoyed the appearance and plot of the film, and I don't see how it was easily predictable like some reviewers have said. I am someone who usually solves mystery stories before the characters do, and I didn't figure this one out until after Joker was killed. There were plenty of twists that kept the mystery fresh and interesting. The only thing I wish the film did better was the portrayal of animal lab experimentation. While the one scene that shows it does so in a wonderfully horrifying way, I feel giving the animal cruelty aspect a larger role in the film would have made the message stronger.Unfortunately, since animation films are generally expected to be child-friendly material, films like Felidae that do not fit into that box are often pushed aside and forgotten. It's a shame because, when approached as an adult film, Felidae is really an excellent and intriguing mystery thriller.

I'm surprised that this film isn't very well known and that its mean score here is a mere 7.1 (which isn't that bad, but isn't that good either). This movie is often compared to The Plague Dogs (Mean score: 7.7), as they both are animated films with a lot of gore and language, but if you ask me, The Plague Dogs pales in comparison to Felidae. The Plague Dogs has better animation, but Felidae has so much more than that: Clever characters, unpredictable plot, witty humor, a developed cat culture, metaphors for human society, superb voice acting, and scientific references. The only danger I see with it is that some kid may want to see it since it's animated and has cats, and since it has no rating, the parents won't know it's not for kids. It would have PG-13 or R rating if it was rated. Be warned: It has frequent mild language (frick, hell, a**, a**hole, d***, god d***), occasional strong language (b******, s***, bulls***, s***head),some sexual references and innuendo, brief cat sex, and a lot of intense cat violence with animated blood and gore (intestines, lungs, and bones).

I ended up stumbling along this title on IMDb one day and read all the info about. It sounded like a good movie and I wanted to watch it. The only problem was, I was a bit hesitate about it as I was warned that this movie contain gory and upsetting scenes in it and I usually don't do well with gory movie (they make me sick in the stomach) but as time passed, curiosity got the better of me.Superb storyline and this movie had me guessing till the end of whodunit and I was not let down. And the gory bits... They didn't make me sick at all. I think that rather strange.I would not recommend this to kids at all. If fact, since it wasn't released in Australia I decided while watching the movie that I would give the movie a classification: MA+15.