Obsession is a dangerous thing.  In the new movie Be My Cat: A Film For Anne, we see just how dangerous it can ultimately be.

Adrian (Adrian Tofei) is an amateur filmmaker; in fact, he’s so amateur he’s never made anything before. He is obsessed with the actress Anne Hathaway, and wants to make a new movie as his calling card to try to convince her to work with him on a future project. He decides to enlist some local actresses to help him as Anne surrogates to show her how well he and Anne will work together. Oh, and he loves cats. Hey, Anne played Catwoman in that Batman movie! This is a match made in heaven!

Adrian, the obsessed fan of Anne Hathaway, wants to play Anne’s obsessed fan in the proposed movie, and he continually talks to the camera, that is, us, that is, Anne, showing off how well he can play her psychotic obsessed fan.  He shows off how deadly he will be in Anne’s movie by showing off how deadly he can be to the actresses he hires to act like Anne.

Adrian Tofei, the write-director-actor who created this wild movie, is also obsessed. He’s obsessed with making sure the character of Adrian is believable, but also dangerously unhinged. He does an amazing balancing act here, showing us glimpses of Adrian’s insanity, then pulling back with a boyish grin and becoming embarrassed and humble almost likable.  It’s amazing and I really could not take my eyes off of him throughout the complete running time. One minute he’s the perpetrator of a brutal kidnapping, and the next he’s dancing and singing along with Romanian radio.

It’s obvious that, even though the general outline was well thought out, each individual scene was improvised and the three actresses who worked with Tofei (Sonia Teodoriu, Florentina Hariton, Alexandra Stroe) deserve to share in the praise. Their ability to further a scene, and their reactions to Adrian’s increasingly suspicious requests of them, are really terrific and natural. Often, I truly forgot that I was watching a fiction; I began to question Adrian’s sanity and feel worried for the safety of the three women (Sonia Teodoriu actually called the police during one particularly tense scene because it was what her character would do and she was caught up in the emotions).

Not everything works: when the chips are down and the blood flows, some cheats are utilized (an obviously-placed sheet hiding part of the body?) to hide the lack of effects budget (or talent). Also, a few times it seems like the improv broke down and the actors were struggling to find their way to the next plot point.  A little fumbling is not a bad idea to lend reality, but a couple times I really rolled my eyes .

But those moments were few and far between. I liked this movie very much, and I’m excited by the prospect of more stories from Tofei. Uncle Mike sez check it out!  Be My Cat: A Film For Anne is available now on Vimeo On Demand, and will debut on Amazon Video, Prime and DVD in January 2017. The trailer is below.