20 Amazing South Korean Movies You Must See Before You Die
14. Take Care Of My Cat
New Korean Cinema in the twenty-first century has been a movement largely led by male filmmakers, but Jeong Jae-eun's tender story of five girls growing up and growing apart in the time after high school shows that there is still a place in Korean films for stories about young women finding their voice and identity.
Take Care Of My Cat is the story of a group of school friends in the industrial port city of Incheon trying to make their way in the adult world and not lose touch, even while their differences in class and opportunity pull them in very different directions. They remain tied together by the care of a stray kitten, the ownership of which passes through the girls throughout the film.
The film is a well-observed document of coming of age in the early twenty-first century, full of scenes which explore the way that the newfound ubiquity of mobile phones has changed the way that we communicate.
Jeong's later work includes documentaries about urban life and landscapes, so she also demonstrates a good eye for the divides of class and ethnicity and the port city's status as a transitional space from which to come and go. Take Care Of My Cat is not simply a portrait of female friendship, then, but also a film with something to say about life in contemporary Korea.