The Cat Piano

In a shadowy animated city, all blues and blacks, everything revolves around a pulsing musical scene. Seedy nightclubs, sleazy jazz, a beautiful singer all glowing and white - it's Heaven to our narrator. Until cats begin to disappear.

The notion of the cat piano - every bit as crude a device as it sounds, yet told of from a cat's perspective, with other cats sounding beautiful - might owe something to Monty Python and a certain mouse organ, but this is a tale with a very different tone.

It's styled as film noir and the narration by Nick Cave lends it a creepiness that goes way beyond the scope of its central poem. There's an expectation of real violence, a sense of the desperation often underlying creative urban scenes. Our heroes are portrayed as peaceful by nature, but how far will they go to defend - or avenge - their own?

Applying such an intensely dramatic tone to what is in essence a ludicrous story gives this film a certain charm which will make it appeal to fans of the noir genre and many more besides. It never quite generates the energy that might make it stand out, and its characters are the usual noir archetypes with little to distinguish them, but it's still an intriguing curiosity, elegantly made.