Dis­cov­er the stom­ach-turn­ing hor­rors of this Anne Hath­away bait­ing thriller

“Hel­lo, Anne. My name is Adri­an, I am from Roma­nia and I want to make a movie with you.” The pro­tag­o­nist of Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is played by his name­sake Adri­an Țofei – and if Țofei serves as this film’s direc­tor, writer, pro­duc­er, DoP, edi­tor, sound design­er and pro­duc­tion designer/​manager, his char­ac­ter Adri­an is also a first-time poly­hy­phen­ate film­mak­er pitch­ing his own movie called Be My Cat, and him­self try­ing to get into char­ac­ter to play that film’s creepy roman­tic lead. The oth­er play­ers with whom Adri­an inter­acts, chiefly the three aspir­ing actress­es whom he has tricked into appear in his spe­cial film, are also played by actress­es (Sonia Teodor­iu, Flo­renti­na Hari­ton, Alexan­dra Stone) who share their character’s forenames.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the moth­er with whom man­child Adri­an still lives (an ear­ly hint of Psy­cho) is played by Țofei’s own moth­er Dori­na. And while the tit­u­lar Anne – whom Adri­an address­es with his open­ing words to cam­era and keeps address­ing through­out the film – may be an ever-present absence, nev­er seen on screen, and pre­sum­ably nev­er receiv­ing the film that Adri­an intends for her eyes only, she too is nonethe­less a real per­son: Adrian’s own ​‘Cat­woman’, the actress Anne Hath­away. In oth­er words, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is a prime exam­ple of meta-cin­e­ma, end­less­ly blur­ring the line between behind-the-scenes real­i­ty and onscreen fan­ta­sy, between doc­u­men­tary and fic­tion, while also repeat­ed­ly com­ment­ing on the process of its own making.

Adrian’s film is sup­pos­ed­ly a pitch to Hath­away, designed to show off Adrian’s self-sac­ri­fic­ing com­mit­ment to direct­ing, all in an attempt to per­suade her to star in Be My Cat. Yet text at the very begin­ning reveals that Adrian’s film has since become a clas­sic piece of ​‘found footage’, dis­cov­ered ​“by police at the Be My Cat crime scene in Rădău­ti, Roma­nia on 20 May, 2014.” As we see gig­gling ail­urophile (but also cat stran­gler) Daniel humil­i­at­ing his actress­es with impos­si­ble direc­tions and then mur­der­ing them one-by-one on cam­era, all in the name of the film­mak­ing art and his own pecu­liar vision, it is clear that this is a hor­ror film, cap­tur­ing the per­verse iden­ti­ty splits in Adrian’s char­ac­ter – who is, as he keeps insist­ing, only play­ing a role for the movie – even as it shows his actress­es shift­ing from mere play dis­com­fort to real terror.

Yet Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is also a twist­ed romance. For it is a love let­ter to Hath­away and to the Hol­ly­wood mod­el that she rep­re­sents, acces­si­ble to the likes of Adri­an only through twist­ed fan­ta­sy – and through no-bud­get home­grown imi­ta­tion (like this very film). The results are an unnerv­ing study in cinephil­ia and ero­to­ma­nia, falling some­where between Rémy Belvaux’s Man Bites Dog and Patrick Brice’s Creep, as one man doc­u­ments his own mur­der­ous obses­sion, know­ing full well that his pos­ses­sion of a cam­era is the best cov­er sto­ry for acts lift­ed from the hor­ror genre. Adri­an lends his misog­y­ny, sadism and psy­chopa­thy a benign, naïve, almost endear­ing (and unset­tling­ly fun­ny) face, while Țofei, already con­found­ing our sense of fiction’s bound­aries with a bar­rage of self-reflex­ive real­i­ty effects, has only added to all this unease by start­ing an online peti­tion to get his film seen by the real Hathaway.

Who knows, per­haps she will star in his next fea­ture, or even set­tle down with him to have a fam­i­ly. In any case, Țofei here proves him­self an inven­tive film­mak­er, only too hap­py to put him­self on the line to realise his improb­a­ble ambi­tions – and it will be inter­est­ing to fol­low the next (hope­ful­ly deranged) steps in his career.

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is now avail­able to watch inter­na­tion­al­ly on demand.