Turkish-American indie filmmaker Onur Tukel is back in the spotlight with this new outing, leaning into satire and away from his slightly more uncomfortable forays into horror-comedy. Tukel’s latest effort pits Veronica (Sandra Oh), a rich trophy wife, against her old friend from college Ashley, played by Anne Heche. The two had a falling-out after Ashley came out as a lesbian back in the day, and dear friend Veronica decided the best way to respond was by completely ghosting her. So right off the bat, the unapologetic Oh is instantly dislikeable. Not only did she betray her close pal all those years ago, in the present day she’s just as unpleasant. She savagely tears into her earnest teenage son for having an interest in art (a worthless vocation, by her standards), she drinks heavily (she’d likely be the mum on your Facebook feed posting “wine-o-clock lol” most days) and she treats her hired help like garbage. When Ashley and Veronica run into each other randomly at a party, the old resentment between the two women quickly rises to the surface and they’re soon punching each other’s lights out in a fluorescent-lit corridor away from the revellers. And then they have another punch-up. And another one. Tukel uses these extensive fights to bookmark the film’s acts quite neatly, and what happens before and after them drives the story forward, sometimes years into the future. The fights themselves celebrate a sort of They Live vibe, with punches not connecting properly, overly-staged moves that feel wrestling-lite, and almost cartoonish sound effects as the fists and feet rain down. It’s a lot. There’s a lot going on. But the film is always inherently watchable, and after initially brushing it off as tonally-confused and unsatisfying, it started to eat away at me fairly quickly. What did it all mean?   At some points, it’s easy to imagine the two women are simply one person, a visual representation of the endless internal conflict of self-hatred and narcissism that swirls within so many of us. What makes us ‘better’ than each other? Does it matter what we have when we can lose it so quickly? Why do we only appreciate things properly when they’re taken from us? How can we ever truly redeem ourselves when there’s always another tomorrow yet to come? At other times, it seems like Catfight is purely a comment on the perpetual horrors dished out by the human condition itself. Fighting over money, fighting over religion, fighting over love, always fighting, fighting, fighting over something, while we wilfully ignore the consequences. Perhaps the film is about none of these things. In the end, it lets you decide for yourself what its purpose is, but with its brazenly original ideas and refusal to spoon-feed you any sort of rationale for its existence, Catfight can only come fully recommended. Catfight is out on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download now