Director – Hong Eun-won – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. PG – 112m
****
A cat passes between a group of twentysomething girls as each one finds they can no longer look after it – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank
(2024 explanatory note: This was, I believe, the first South Korean film to get a UK theatrical release. It was certainly the first one I ever reviewed, for What’s On in London back in 2002. Soon after this, Metro-Tartan film distributors would release a good deal of horror / thriller / action movies in cinemas and on DVD under their Asia Extreme brand, but it would be a long time before the UK saw the theatrical release of another South Korean film outside of those genres. What follows below is the What’s On in London review from 2002.)
Two areas of the world currently make its most interesting films. One is Iran and surrounding area, which has been fairly well represented in terms of UK releases. The other is South Korea, largely and criminally neglected by UK distributors. South Korea has in recent years made some of the most compelling movies in the world. The country has risen in the last half century from a fairly backward rural economy to a modern, city based, hi-tech industrial power, cramming what took the UK’s Industrial Revolution over a century into a fraction of that time. South Korean society hasn’t quite adjusted to resultant rapid social and economic changes, a conundrum embodied in its film output.
Take Care Of My Cat has a template familiar to Western viewers – a group of twentysomething girls who were friends in school try not to drift apart as they make their way in the world – but is utterly unsentimental and light years removed from the more familiar, syrupy, Hollywood offerings covering similar ground. Art student wannabe Ji-young (Ok Ji-young) finds a cat and gives it to ambitious financial office dogsbody Hae-joo (Lee Yo-won). The feline passes from one girl to another throughout the remainder of the film, functioning as a MacGuffin, a convenient device to explore the girl’s lives.
These lives make for fascinating viewing. Viewers from the sheltered, politically correct West will be stunned, for instance, by the sequence where an apartment roof is found to have caved in on its occupants. Further tension is generated between unambitious dreamer Tae-hee (Bae Doo-na) and the aforementioned Hae‑joo. The harsh, no-nonsense South Korean sensibility of director Jeong Jae-eun makes for something unlike anything else seen in London for quite a while. Highly recommended.
And, yes, Ji-young really is played by an actress named Ok Ji-young.
In addition to Bae Doo-na aka Doona Bae (Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder, 2024, 2023; Next Sohee, July Jung, 2022; Broker, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2022; Jupiter Ascending, Lana Wachowski, Lily Wachowski, 2015; A Girl at my Door, July Jung, 2014; Cloud Atlas, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Lily Wachowski, 2012; Air Doll, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009; The Host, Bong Joon Ho, 2006; Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Park Chan-wook, 2002; Barking Dogs Never Bite, Bong Joon Ho, 2000), cast also includes: Oh Tae-kyung (R-Point, Kong Su-chang, 2004; Oldboy, Park Chan-wook, 2003); Hwang Seok-jeong (Memoir of a Murderer, Won Shin-yeon, 2017; The Wailing, Na Hong-jin, 2026); Kim Su-hyeon (Oldboy); Yoo Soon-cheol (A Taxi Driver, Hun Jang, 2017).
Take Care Of My Cat plays in Echoes in Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank.
It was originally released in the UK in 2002, when this review was published in What’s On in London.
LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival 2024 runs from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th at BFI Southbank and other venues.
Trailer: