Catfight Movie Review

『A Tragic Satire of Two Women Collapsing Amid Cycles of Revenge and Hatred』

🎥 Film Overview

🎬 Title: Catfight (2016)
🌍 Country: 🇺🇸 United States
🎞️ Genre: Black Comedy / Drama / Satire
🗓️ Production and Release: Independent Production, 2016, Feature Film
⏳ Running Time: Approximately 88 minutes
📢 Director: Onur Tukel
🖋️ Screenplay: Onur Tukel
📺 Platform: Available on DVD and streaming services

👩‍💼 Cast: Sandra Oh – Veronica Salt
Anne Heche – Ashley Miller
Alicia Silverstone – Lisa

🧩 Story Deep Dive (Spoilers)

⚡ Brutal Black Comedy on Class and Hatred

《Catfight》 is a black comedy that transcends a simple feud between two women. The film explores class, capitalism, female envy, and the endless cycles of rage in a brutal, satirical allegory. While the title 'Catfight' conventionally connotes a superficial and derisive fight between women, the movie subverts this notion into a full-blown, bone-crushing revenge saga.

🤼 The Cruel ‘Trading Places’ of Wealth and Poverty

The narrative revolves around the repeated confrontations between two college friends at opposite ends of life, Veronica and Ashley, whose fates are cruelly reversed across three acts.

• Act 1: Chance Reunion and the First Clash:
  • Veronica (Sandra Oh): A trophy wife of a wealthy businessman profiting from war, trapped in material abundance, cynical about her life and her artist-aspiring son.
  • Ashley (Anne Heche): An unsuccessful painter struggling to make ends meet with her girlfriend, carrying anger and frustration toward life.
  • At a party, the two meet again and express subtle contempt and jealousy toward each other’s lives, culminating in a full-on physical altercation on a staircase. Veronica falls into a coma as a result.
• Act 2: Cruel Reversal:
  • Two years later, Veronica awakens to find her husband and son dead, bankrupt, and cast at the bottom of society.
  • Meanwhile, Ashley rises to artistic success and wealth, achieving the family life she had dreamed of. Their fortunes are completely inverted, initiating a role reversal of wealth and poverty.
• Act 3: Second Clash and Endless Cycle:
  • Driven by jealousy of Ashley’s success, Veronica plots revenge, leading to another brutal fight that once again flips their destinies.

💥 Rage, Capitalism, and a Portrait of America

The film’s exaggerated violence serves not merely as a comedic device but as a reflection of the director’s cynical view of modern society.

• Allegory of Class Warfare: The women’s fights symbolize class conflict beyond personal hatred. Veronica represents the arrogance of the wealthy, while Ashley embodies the envy and rage of the poor. Their struggles depict the endless cycles of capitalist violence, where the victor enjoys temporary success but is eventually dragged down by the rage of the defeated.
• Absence of Female Solidarity: The film completely negates the often-expected ‘female solidarity.’ Veronica and Ashley’s relationship demonstrates the dark truth that women can be each other’s harshest adversaries, with their animosity stemming from one another’s existence and way of life, not from men.
• War and Cynicism as Political Backdrop: The backdrop features an endless Middle Eastern war instigated by an unnamed president. Veronica’s husband profits, and her son dies after enlisting. This political context implies that the women’s personal battles are tied to the broader, violent, absurd realities of American society, functioning as cynical satire.

🌟 Between Discomfort and Liberation

Director Onur Tukel deliberately uses discomforting cinematic techniques.

• Brutal Physical Fights: The battles between Sandra Oh and Anne Heche are filled with exaggerated sound effects and brutality, subverting the sexist connotation of ‘catfight’ to show that female anger can be expressed as real violence akin to male action films. This violence is sometimes comedic but often induces deep discomfort and shock in the audience.
• Powerful Performances: Sandra Oh and Anne Heche inject immense energy and relentlessness into their roles. Their performances convincingly convey deep-seated hatred and anxiety beneath the film’s unreal comedic tone, making this one of the movie’s greatest strengths.

《Catfight》 is an extremely uncomfortable yet inventive black comedy. The film shows how the polarized realities of wealth and poverty, success and failure, can corrupt the soul and trap individuals in an endless cycle of rage and revenge. Every character is both victim and perpetrator in this brutal allegory, delivering a piercing critique of modern American society.

🎯 Personal Rating

⭐ Rating: ★★