"Kater" or "Tomcat" is an Austrian German-language film from 2016 that is pretty long at 2 hours and here we got the second career effort by writer and director Händl Klaus. Don't be mistaken by the title and poster here as this one is not an animal documentary like Kedi, another 2016 film and that one actually is about cats. This one here is really not about cats at all, but the one cat that appears in it during the first half is just means to tell us about the 2 protagonists, a gay couple and they are the owners of the cat in here. Their sexual orientation really isn't much in the focus of the film and this one is not about sexual identification or anything as it could very well have been a man and a woman too. What is in the center though is their relationship from start to finish of this movie. It is an okay character study as a whole, even if I must say that it never really interested or even touched me as I hope it could and that's why all in all I find the awards recognition also exaggerated pretty much. It is a very slow and steady film with the exception of 2-3 haunting moments of escalation that change everything, but then again don't as we find out in the long run. Saying that not too much happens in here would be a bit of a lie and even if it was true, then this could still be a decent watch if the film delivers as a convincing character study and atmospheric full feature film. But in my opinion it comes short in most departments and is a pretty mediocre work with some sequences that felt shocking for the sake of it. Maybe it is also a bit too long for its own good ans with this running time it could have needed 1-2 decent supporting characters that we can care about and not just the couple in the center of it all. Have to give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Wow! A movie that gives you plenty of questions, but no real answers. Leaving it up to the discerning film-goer to make of it what they wish. With me, well-- it has taken me 24 hours to sit right down and write something about this challenging piece of work.

It's not the sudden act of the killing that shocked me, but the way in which the relationship sustained that act to survive. If made by other mindless filmmakers, there would have been loud confrontations, the law would have been involved, as well as the psychiatrists. But we were in the capable hands of Klaus, the writer and director, who handled this horrendous situation with maturity, focusing more on the strength of the relationship.

I will admit that after the first thirty minutes it was getting rather tedious. How many shots of the joyous cat can you have? And the utter love in the human relationship had me envious! It wasn't until the incident that it all came to life. By then I was angry because the director had masterfully drawn me to empathize with the cat (and I'm not much of a cat lover). How could he have done that to the poor defenseless cat? I was yelling at the screen, telling the lover to leave the relationship, and was completely stupefied by his decision not to, and that's why I kept watching, engrossed in the sudden change in this once loving relationship. What made it work was the top-notch performances from the leads, including the cat that we fell in love with.

As for cat lovers, maybe not for you, but if you do watch it, please do so with an open mind because it is not about the killing of a creature, but how a strong relationship sustains such an incident and how the human condition enables us to forgive no matter what.

I saw this last night and after it was over I felt manipulated. For the first half of "Tomcat," the director goes to great lengths to show how intimate Stefan and Andreas are, and their relationship is portrayed as almost an ideal one. After the death of the cat (which I'm assuming was killed by Stefan, even though I re-watched the shot three times and couldn't see anything that showed that) the characters seemed to take on completely different personalities. There was absolutely no interaction between the two men to try and understand why it happened or explore each others' feelings about the incident; instead, the film only consists mostly of days going by with Andreas avoiding Stefan, beating up on him, or giving him hateful looks. It's very unlikely that two people in a relationship as close as theirs would continue to avoid any kind of discussion to try and come to terms with what happened or understand each other after something this traumatic occurred. The film may make a point about the "darkness" in each of us, but doesn't follow up with it very realistically.