Korean directors seem to handle complex female characters well. While often over the top and a touch unrealistic, as in 'My Sassy Girl', there are still moments of beautiful reality. Things you can genuinely relate to. 'Take Care Of My Cat' and it's director Jeong Jae Eun takes this entire ideal one-step further.

The film revolves around five central characters. Having been good friends in high school they are now readying themselves to take their respective places out in the big wide world. In many ways, this threatens to drive a wedge between them forever. Tae Hee (Bae Doo Na) regulates her time between working unpaid for her father's business and trying to keep the group of friends together. Down to earth but full of hope, she has her sights on doing something a little different and at one point turns up at the local sailors bar and asks how she can get on board a ship. Hae Joo (Lee Yo Won) moves straight into an office job. Though little more than a glorified tea lady, spending money like it's unlimited and acting as if many of the group are below her seems to be her only goal in life. Ji Young (Ok Ji Young) is perhaps the outcast of the group. Living with her grandparents in a run down apartment, she finds solace in her talent for art but embarrassment in her constant money borrowing from Tae Hee. Lastly, identical twins Ohnjo and Biryu (Eun Shil and Eun Lee) seem quite content to let nothing change. Their gentle character contrasts starkly with the rest of the group.

Director/Writer Jeong Jae Eun gets her story across with beautiful simplicity. The actresses she has employed each give inspired performances and though the movie almost seems unscripted, it never meanders. Characters act and react in a way that seems real. You occasionally feel like you're watching a documentary on young women in contemporary Korea. It never becomes dull though. Utilising computer graphics to display each of the girls' mobile text messages onto nearby surfaces, is just one of the neat visual tricks. The use of the 'cat' of the title is also clever. After finding it alone in the street, Ji Young decides to give it to Hae Joo as a birthday gift. Responsibility however is not something she needs and so she returns it. The cat is eventually passed around the group. Finding it's way to each of the five friends. It gives us a chance to spend equal time with each character and also works as a clever metaphor. The combination of lovely cinematography and interesting music really helps you feel what it would be like to be living Seoul's port city 'Inchon' and for me the entire film evoked a feeling similar to Wong Kar Wai's 'Chungking Express', with themes of loneliness and isolation peeking out at every turn.

I mentioned before that this film avoids many of the clichés this genre is notorious for. Along with this comes the absence of something I feel too many films focus on - sex. No part of this story involves boyfriends or sex. The five young women in this group have far too many things to work out in their lives to be wasting time talking about sex or chasing guys. 'Take Care Of My Cat' is all the better for that. If it's silly hi-jinks or crude comedy you are after then this may not be for you. That's fine, there is always '100 Days With Mr. Arrogant'. If you want to see simple but effective story telling, characters you could easily bump into in the street and three of Korea's best young actresses then just 'Take Care Of My Cat' for a few hours.

Hae-joo is pretty, but image obsessed, superficial, and works in an office, reveling in the corporate life style and worrying over her advancement among the workplace ranks. Tae-hee, the instigator of the most get-togethers, is the daughter of a middle-class, make no waves family, and she spends her free time typing poems for a disabled poet. Ji-young is a sullen, poor, wannabe designer, who lives with her fragile grandparents in the slums. Twins Bi-ryu and Ohn-joo seem to be the most happy, selling their handmade jewelry on the street corners, and always having each other to lean on.

The film finds its main focus on Ji-young, the most introspective and troubled member of the group (a US remake would probably aim at a Christina Ricci type). She is the one with the most talent but the least opportunity, and her story has the most foreshadowing. Tae-hee is probably the most relatable to anyone who remembers or is in the midst of those post teen years where you are considered an adult but may not yet know what you are going to do with your maturity. Hae-joo seems to be the reflection of Korea's modern age, a young woman trying to get a foothold, who worries over her appearance and status above all else.

The cat in question is a birthday gift to Hae-joo from Ji-young. The kitten is quickly returned because Hae-joo says she just doesnt have the time for a pet. As Ji-young's situation worsens, the cat is passed from friend to friend.

The film opens with the girls fresh out of high school taking a group post-graduation photo. Their jumping around, screeching, and giggling made me brace myself for a bubbly, candy-coated, coming of age, chick flick. However, as the film settled in, I was quite surprised and very relieved to find Take Care of My Cat was a much more mature and interesting film about an often cliched subject matter. The film does have its weaker points. The running time could be trimmed a tad, some bits don't help the progression, especially with the underdeveloped Bi-ryu and Ohn-joo adding little, if anything, to the story. The disabled poet, with his cluelessly funny self pity prose, reminded me of the cerebral palsied writer/boyfriend in the "Fiction" segment of Todd Solondz's Storytelling. Though, because they were both made the same year, I'd chalk the latter up to coincidence.

Still, first time feature writer/director Jae-eun Jeong wins many admirable points for avoiding all of the contrived dramatic pitfalls. The film unfolds with very little drama/melodrama and forsakes the three act, there-must-be-conflict, grab-your-hankies structure, and instead simply lays out its events and characters with no grand tearjerker scenes or emotional grandstanding. Conventional drama storytelling wold insist there has to be some situation where they confront each other about how their lives are changing, however Take Care of My Cat remains more truthful to the subject, there is no such scene because they are, in fact, growing apart (in distance, in lifestyle, in personality). True to growing up, to getting beyond your childhood friends, as they find themselves, they simply find some of their friendships diluted and some strengthened.

While twins Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo (Eun-shil & Eun-joo Lee) cheerfully resign themselves to the diminished expectations and drab realities of bleak Inchon, narcissistic Hae-joo (Yo-won Lee) surrenders to the seductive undertow of office ladder-climbing at a Seoul brokerage. Melancholy Ji-young (Ji-young Ok) desperately staves off an avalanche of big-city bad luck, leaving the charismatic but circumspect Tae-hee (Doo-na Bae) to spiritedly hold the group together even while challenging the family that exploits her.

Director Jae-eun Jeong's meticulous, deeply moving examination of courage, loss and yearning on the perilous threshold of maturity demonstrates she is "as savvy about young women as she is about cinema." (Chicago Tribune) Doo-na Bae's multiple award winning performance has a rich ring of truth and engages the heart with an assuredly crafted simplicity virtually extinct in youth films. From the title cat that passes from girl to girl to the cell-phone text-messages that appear on screen as the five friends seek to stay connected, TAKE CARE OF MY CAT blossoms into both a sincere, emotionally lucid cinematic vision and a brisk pop-movie treat.