Official selection
Côte-courte Film Festival 2000
PIA Film Festival 1999
Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival 1999
Director
Jeong Jae-eun
Writer
Jeong Jae-eun
Cast
Bae Doo-na, Ok Ji-young, Lee Yo-won
contact
Barunson E&A
A year after graduating, five inseparable girls begins to drift apart. Hae-joo (Lee Yo-won, ATTACK THE GAS STATION) works for a brokerage firm, on a path to become a successful career woman. Ji-young (Ok Ji-young), a talented artist, dreams of studying abroad while tending to her grandparents’ dilapidated house. Meanwhile, the sweet, eccentric Tae-hee (superstar Bae Doo-na, NEXT SOHEE, in one of her earliest roles) connects with a young poet suffering from cerebral palsy, in an attempt to escape the pressures put upon her by her father. Finally, the lively twins Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo (Lee Eun-sil and Lee Eun-ju of ASAKO IN RUBY SHOES) complete the group, but struggle as descendants from Chinese grandparents in a segregated society. Ji-young’s cat Tee-tee is the remaining link between them, easing an uneasy transition into ruthless adulthood.
Somewhat of a sleeper hit at the time of its release, Jeong Jae-eun’s debut TAKE CARE OF MY CAT has since been reconsidered as one of the all-time classics of South Korean cinema, and deservedly so. This is in no small part due to the star-making performances of its cast and its director’s keen eye for setting. Jeong juxtaposes the lives of its protagonists with the industrial backdrop of Incheon — a port city bearing the brunt of the country’s globalization efforts — and the film can now be seen as a timeless snapshot of South Korean society, exploring notions of class and solidarity, opportunity and privilege (or lack thereof) as the uniformity of school life wears off and leads into the heterogeneity of adulthood and its lot of squashed dreams. Realistic, bleak, yet sunny when it needs to be, poignant, never sappy and effortlessly cool, TAKE CARE OF MY CAT offers a multi-faceted look at women’s lives and is nothing short of an essential film. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
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