I don't know how they got those cats to do all those cute thing because mine would simply refuse and walk away. Maybe half way into the film a nana second violent action turns the relationship between Moses's housemates up-side-down and the rest of the movie explore the long, long road to forgiveness and attempts at recovering normalcy. It's not that bad, but nothing really spectacular. I was expecting something worse at the end, so was surprised it turned out well after all.

I feel that the movie was executed fairly well. The actors did a brilliant job in my opinion, however, the content of the film just really annoyed me.

The first 30 minutes showed the passion between the 2 characters, and long footage of the cat going about its day. Lots of full frontal nudity. There was even a scene when the main characters danced with raging erections. I'm in no way a prude, but the sex scene when friend Lorenz watched was a little odd, to me.

OK so Stefan did kill the cat, however I don't think he harboured some inner dark hatred for Moses. From how I see it, Moses bit Stefan on the hand and in a knee jerk reaction, horrifyingly, Stefan broke Moses' neck, which I don't even think he meant to. It may happen if you get a fright, he stood up and it was quick. Stefan was clearly horrified and remorseful at his actions, as could be guessed by the wailing from him that seemed to have gone on forever. To me, it just showed Andreas physically and emotionally abusing Stefan over a fairly long period. Stefan, the poor guy even had a breakdown while playing soccer with his mates. Andreas made Stefan see a psychologist. I don't know whether you were supposed to but I felt myself siding with Stefan.

It wasn't until Stefan fell out of a tree and lost one eye did Andreas show some sort of compassion. Even then Andreas treated Stefan with contempt.

It wasn't until the end of the film did you see Andreas give permission to Stefan to kiss him.

It was a great film, but Andreas' weird obsessive grieving process for Moses was just a little too much for me, and I just wanted to scream at the TV for Stefan to leave him. Andreas was a bully and Stefan had low self esteem issues.

"Kater" or "Tomcat" is an Austrian German-language film from 2016 that is pretty long at 2 hours and here we got the second career effort by writer and director Händl Klaus. Don't be mistaken by the title and poster here as this one is not an animal documentary like Kedi, another 2016 film and that one actually is about cats. This one here is really not about cats at all, but the one cat that appears in it during the first half is just means to tell us about the 2 protagonists, a gay couple and they are the owners of the cat in here. Their sexual orientation really isn't much in the focus of the film and this one is not about sexual identification or anything as it could very well have been a man and a woman too. What is in the center though is their relationship from start to finish of this movie. It is an okay character study as a whole, even if I must say that it never really interested or even touched me as I hope it could and that's why all in all I find the awards recognition also exaggerated pretty much. It is a very slow and steady film with the exception of 2-3 haunting moments of escalation that change everything, but then again don't as we find out in the long run. Saying that not too much happens in here would be a bit of a lie and even if it was true, then this could still be a decent watch if the film delivers as a convincing character study and atmospheric full feature film. But in my opinion it comes short in most departments and is a pretty mediocre work with some sequences that felt shocking for the sake of it. Maybe it is also a bit too long for its own good ans with this running time it could have needed 1-2 decent supporting characters that we can care about and not just the couple in the center of it all. Have to give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.