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"A gifted dissector of bad behaviour … [Old Cats] reveals Silva's mastery of tone shifts, from domestic horror to mordant hilarity to well-earned, never maudlin reconciliation." – Artforum
The follow-up to Sebastián Silva's Sundance prize winner The Maid (which first screened at MIFF in 2009), Old Cats cracks open the toxic dynamics of a mother/daughter relationship to both comic and tragic effect.
Isadora (92-year-old Bélgica Castro) is descending into senility, her husband Enrique (Alejandro Sieveking) watching on helplessly. On a day when a broken elevator leaves Isadora apartment-bound, her coked-up daughter Rosario (Claudia Celedón) shows up with her female lover, a store of emotional baggage and a plan to fleece her parents of their flat.
Filmed with a comic sensibility and meticulous eye for detail – it is set almost entirely in the apartment of Castro and Sieveking, married in real life – Old Cats captures the absurdities of family life with an ultimately redemptive ethos.
Find out more about the Talking Pictures panel event related to this screening.