WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY

Starring Garance Clavel Directed by Cedric Klapisch Rated R, with profanity, nudity and sexuality Running time 95 minutes; in French, with English subtitles We give this film a rating of 7 out of 10

(August 8, 1997) -- Cedric Klapisch's oddly involving When the Cat's Away is a meandering slice of life, giving us a look at the day-to-day goings-on in one Parisian neighborhood.

At the center of this slight story is Chloe, a pretty, shy makeup artist who lives with her gay male roommate Michel. About to take her first vacation in a couple of years, she can't find anyone to take care of her cat, Gris-Gris. Inquiries in the neighborhood lead her to the eccentric Madame Renee, who has several cats of her own. The bandy-legged crone agrees to watch her pet. When Chloe returns for Gris-Gris a week later, Madame Renee sadly informs her, in fact, that her cat has been missing for several days -- probably went out a window Madame Renee accidentally left open.

As Chloe searches for her pet, she gets some unexpected -- and occasionally unwanted -- help: from Madame Renee and her network of lonely, aged widowed friends, as well as from Djamel, a neighbor who has had his eye on Chloe but was too introverted to approach her. The cat hunt becomes the perfect excuse for him to dog her every step.

Her search produces no results. Slowly, her life returns to normal, with one exception: Chloe becomes aware of just how lonely she is without a cat or a man in her life. Normally reticent, she accepts her co-workers' invitation to an evening at a bar, only to attract unwanted attention from several men and, eventually, the female bartender.

Klapisch took an improvisational approach to this film, using people who live in the actual neighborhood where he filmed. This isn't the glamorous, romantic Paris; rather, it's a residential area (sans a single shot of the Eiffel Tower) where every block seems disrupted by new construction. The slim plot is an excuse to show the nature of community in a large city, where both the impersonal and the highly personal coexist closely, and also to show how people connect in unusual circumstances with people they normally would not even know.

Chloe becomes a surrogate granddaughter to Madame Renee and her cronies. At one point, one little old lady calls her to report on the search progress; in fact, she has no news but merely wants to chat about the weather.

Chloe also gets to know the people in her neighborhood who hang out at the local cafe. They begin as helpers in the search for Gris-Gris but wind up as a kind of surrogate family.

As you may have noticed, I use words like "slight" and "slim" to describe this story. It is more of a character study than anything else, examining the lonely life of this young woman, played by the lovely Garance Clavel. Plot seems secondary to watching her as she has one minor adventure after another. In that respect, When the Cat's Away seems less like a film than an anecdote inflated to movie-size.

But it's a diverting tale, one in which the less-interesting elements inevitably give way to the moments of the found-comedy Klapisch is seeking.