Avid film fans will, by now, have heard about Catfight, the film in which Anne Heche and Sandra Oh - no better women - beat seven shades of snot out of each other. And then they do it again. And again. There is, to be fair, more substance to the latest film from Turkish-American visual artist Onur Tukel, than that account might suggest. Tukel has previously spiked several horror-comedies (Summer of Blood, Applesauce) with something of Curb Your Enthusiasm's self-involved deadpan.
In this spirit, Catfight turns out to the movie Larry David might make after a sex-change and years of fight training. Away from the entertainingly cartoonish outbreaks of fisticuffs that punctuate this winningly odd comedy - Heche and Oh really do commit to those punches as the big-hitters of classical music (Bach, Mozart, et al) blare across the soundtrack - Catfight claws mercilessly at class politics.
It all kicks off when privileged trophy wife Veronica Salt (Sandra Oh) encounters her former college rival Ashley (Anne Heche) at an impossibly upscale Manhattan party. The latter - a struggling artist - is catering the event and the two old frenemies are soon exchanging clipped passive-aggressive remarks, then full-blown insults, and finally, left jabs, right crosses and head-bashing. Ouch. By the time Veronica comes to from her cranial ordeal, she has suffered a ferocious, blackly comic reversal of fortune. Dylan Baker’s grimly hilarious doctor fills in the blanks with a performance that is a strong contender for the movieverse’s worst bedside manner.
There are marvellous and superbly bitchy comic set pieces to savour in this extended doodle. When Ashley and her girlfriend Samantha (welcome back, Alicia Silverstone) throw a baby shower, every single gift is dismissed with vicious critique. Elsewhere, Ashley and Veronica’s horrendous twinned treatment of the ‘help’ eventually, and satisfyingly, comes back to bite them on their respective bottoms.
By the time Catfight recycles its punchline for the third time, the power has gone out of its punch. But we'll never say no to a one-joke movie as long as it's a good joke.
