Take care of my cat (고양이를 부탁해)
Director: Jeong Jae-eun (정재은)
Scriptwriters: Jeong Jae-eun (정재은) & Lee Eon-hee (이언희)
Starring: Bae Doona (배두나), Ok Ji-yeong (옥지영), Lee Yo-won (이요원) & Oh Tae-kyeong (오태경)
Running Time: 110mins
Korean Release Date: 13/10/2001
UK Release Date: December 2002
UK Box office: £3,276 (2 Screens)*
* Source: UK Film Council.
In essence, Take Care of My Cat is a chick flick, but one with much more heart to it than your average chick flick. The story surrounds a close group of five girls just and their struggle after high school to maintain their friendship. Their efforts are met with strife as they also struggle to stay together and carve out their own lives and careers. More importantly, this film is an outstanding effort for the first time director Jeong Jae-eun, who has since directed The Aggresives.
The film opens with the five friends having fun in high school, and taking pictures in the industrial town of Inchon. It’s a pleasant opening which soon changes to a rock smashing through a window, as we follow Hae-joo (Lee Yu-won) on a morning commute to her office job. There is little left to interpret here, the once idyllic school days are now gone and the welcome to the real world or work is a harsh one to face for all involved. The film focuses around the relationship between Hae-joo and Ji-young. Hae-joo is now an office assistant looking for an uber-yuppie salary life in Seoul, whereas Ji-young, who lives in the poorer side of Inchon is struggling to make ends meet and struggles even harder to hold onto Hye-joo, her closest friend. These two represent the polar opposites that life can take someone after high school, and is also a huge contrast to them walking arm in arm at the start of the film. They were best friends, but now only see resentment in the way that their paths have panned out. Tae-hee (Bae Doo-na) is caught in between, seeing both as friends who have different paths and trying her best to keep the peace between them. However, tensions flare between Hye-joo and Ji-young throughout the film, as various moments between the two show nothing but animosity, as both nit-pick at each other’s ways of life. When tragedy strikes for Ji-young, we are left to see which one of her friends will stand by her and which ones will retreat.
The film is poignant for its moments between the friends, which no doubt will spark memories with the viewer, which perhaps is one of the major traits of the film. However, the foreboding feeling of the friendship ending makes the happy scenes all the more harder to digest. Tragic events and life changing decisions also leave another lasting feeling – the feeling of moving on. If this film is a coming of age story, then the message is that coming of age comes at a cost, and one which involves leaving some thing behind, such as friends, memories, self respect, and more importantly, a cat.
Directing wise, Jeong has crafted a very interesting style for the film, making it poignant, but also very modern and urban. Some of the most important dialogue in the film is not told through speech, but interestingly through SMS text message. As a character opens their phone, digital Hangul characters sprawl across the screen, allowing the viewer first hand view of the developments. This gives us another interesting insight into the modern age and perhaps the expressionless expression of people in the modern age, and in particular in the technology mad Korea. It could also be a statement about societies numbness towards contact with other human beings, and how doing it through text message is now preferred to real contact, which speaks volumes for the kind of coldness with which Hye-joo treats Ji-young.
" Take Care of My Cat is still considered one of the pioneering films of Korean cinema, and on of the leading films in the Korean wave and rightly so."
There are a few issues with the film which did seem a little curious, the main one being with the remaining two girls, twin sisters Bi-ryu (Lee Eung-sil) and Ohn-jo (Lee Eung-ju). Very little is told about them, and very little character development time is spent on them. It almost seems like they are there to make up the numbers, and to act as cute comic reliefs. One can’t help but feel that the unbalanced development of the characters somewhat stifles the story. Another small concern is the portrayal of Hye-joo as almost an antagonist. She is badly effected by materialism in her new environment, and this is shown in her reluctance to wear glasses and opt instead for laser eye surgery. It even goes so far as to say that she has chosen her career over her friends. However, there is no real time dedicated to Hye-joo’s desire for success after school, which after all is what all graduates are suppose to strive for aren’t they? Instead of a slow diminishment of Hye-joo’s character, we see her straight away as an obnoxious narcissist who realises her mistakes when maybe it is too late.
Despite these few points, Take Care of My Cat is a thoroughly intriguing film about life and the obstacles which face many young people. Although the film is told from the point of view of girls it is not really alienating the opposite sex in its’ story telling. So what went wrong with the film? Take Care of My Cat did not perform well at the Korean box office when it was first released, which may be due down to the marketing or perhaps timing of the release. But what cannot be doubted is that despite the poor box office taking, Take Care of My Cat is still considered one of the pioneering films of Korean cinema, and on of the leading films in the Korean wave and rightly so.
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AASHISH GADHVI