30/08/2022 - Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson’s Edinburgh winner is a moving and complex documentary that explores fear and grief through a prism of creative inertia

Best known for award-winning animated short films such as The Making of Longbird, Scottish directors Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson make their way into the realm of features with the documentary A Cat Called Dom [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Having recently had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – where it won the main prize in the festival’s reconstructed international competition, the Powell and Pressburger Award for Best Film – the 60-minute movie takes a staccato and fragmentary approach to the documentary medium as it explores fear and grief through a prism of changed intentions and creative inertia.

Will Anderson is dealing with the fact that his mum has cancer, so he decides to make a documentary about it. And about her. And maybe even about him. But things don’t go to plan: ideas are left unfinished, creative plans go awry, and Will is still unsure about how to deal with his mother’s illness. Soon, he starts talking to Dom, a small, animated cat who resides on his laptop. But even as Dom tries to dispense some advice, Will finds himself increasingly unsure of how to make the film he wants to make.

We begin with Will delivering a monologue about his intentions for what we are about to see (or, indeed, not to see), setting out the film’s “meta-textual” stall right from the outset. Footage of him trying to be productive, working with voice actors, talking to funders or attending festivals abroad is mixed with more personal moments, such as (seemingly) the moment his mother first reveals her cancer to him. It’s a scattershot approach with scenes barely linked together, creating a collage-like effect of feelings and thoughts. The addition of talking cat Dom seems to be Will’s attempt to add some sort of narrative spine, a character to bounce off whilst trying to make sense of the chaos around him.

But even with Dom on the scene, the documentary fractures and breaks. In one of Will’s monologues, he mentions a scene showing him sleeping on the bus whilst going home, noting it was fake, with him pretending for the camera. There’s always a feeling of disconnection, of being one step removed from reality. At one point, Will goes with his mother to an operation. But as they talk in the car, he removes the scenes with his mother and replaces them with an animatic because she didn’t like the way her face looked. But this moment of weirdness is also an expression of love: the filmmaker not going with the shot, just to try and make his mother happy.

On the face of it, this is all a recipe for massive self-indulgence. Yet the chaos and consistently shifting plains of reality work within the context of the film. The fragmentation represents a certain state of mind when faced with grief: the feeling of removal from one’s normal life and the growing realisation that it’s much harder for things to make sense.

But the film is ultimately simpler than it seems. As the scenes with Will and his mother show, it’s a picture about a boy who loves his mum and doesn’t want her to leave just yet. Their talks are the most endearing – and heartfelt – things in the film.

“It’s meant to be a funny film about cancer. But it’s not,” laments Will at one point. But this debut from him and Henderson (who seems slightly side-lined throughout the whole process, an issue which the film itself explores) is far from an exercise in dourness. Whilst dealing with some weighty themes in a fragmented manner, there’s a genuine sense of heart and gentle humour here that carries the movie through.

At 60 minutes, the film will probably find it hard to get a theatrical release, although limited distribution may be in the offing in some territories. But festivals should welcome it with open arms, and it will also find a good home on VoD.

A Cat Called Dom was produced by Edinburgh-based Parcel of Rogues.