Queer film becomes worthwhile and fun when it succeeds in taking the views and values of your average,
ordinary, "straight" person, views about things so ridiculously commonplace they could almost be boring,
and standing those views completely on their head. Cat Swallows Parakeet...and Speaks!,
an amazing new explosion of a film from Canada, does exactly that.
This film recounts the unfolding of a love story between two women sharing a hospital room.

Scheherazade, a model hounded by gossip tabloids that constantly speculate about possible cosmetic
surgeries and accuse her of hypochondriacal tendencies, has been admitted for treatment of
a stress-related stomach ulcer. Her roommate, the irrepressible Kore,
is an anorexi dancer who devours nothing but tabloid stories and insists on repeating them to anyone
who will listen. There is something odd about every patient in the place,
the doctor has some twisted desire for Scheherazade and seems to be trying to kill her,
and the hospital itself transforms slowly into the set of a horror film.

A skillful parody-pastiche, Cat Swallows Parakeet...and Speaks dismantles the modeling industry,
fashion photography, gossip journalism and Hollywood horror films
that give popular expression to the sexualized body and exploit them as commodities.
It spins a stylish black-and-white/color nightmare world that lets no viewer escape from its web.

Screening first is My Cunt, a biting monologue in which our heroine reclaims the word "cunt"
in order to take on popular perceptions of female body image
that demand perfect exteriors and the silencing of sex.