You Know, I Learned Something Today

ACTRESS BAE DOO NA

Bae Doo-na
and Chŏng Jae-ŭn’s Take Care of My Cat (2001)

I very much admire the film work of South Korean actress Bae Doo-Na, whether it is as the radical anarchist Cha Yeong-mi in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002), as Korean exchange student Son in the Japanese production Linda Linda Linda (2005), or as Park Nam-joo in the record-breaking blockbuster smash The Host (2006). I want to fly the flag here, briefly, for her performance in the coming-of-age drama Take Care of My Cat (2001). Directed by Chŏng Jae-ŭn, Take Care of My Cat follows the gradual transition into adulthood of five twenty-year-old girls who were once inseparable best pals in the industrial port city Inch’ŏn. In her chapter Two of a kind: gender and friendship in Friend and Take Care of My Cat (New Korean Cinema, (ed.) Shin Chi-Yun and Julian Stringer, 2005, pp. 117-131), academic Shin Chi-Yun observes that the film “answers the feminist call for on-screen female camaraderie to parallel the male buddy films” (p. 125) — films such as Failan, Hi, Dharma, Kick the Moon, My Wife is a Gangster (2001) and Marrying the Mafia (2002). She continues:

Chŏng posits that it was the word ‘nomad’ that she thought of most while filming: ‘I wanted my characters to be girls who possessed nothing permanent and therefore were able to leave. Their relationships change and the girls continue to walk. I believe that if something is not moving, the energy weakens and it needs to be filled with things that are moving’ (p. 128).

Yoo Tae-hee (Bae Doo-na), On-jo (Lee Eun-sil), Bi-ryoo (Lee Eun-joo) and Seo Ji-yeong (Ok Go-woon) in Chŏng Jae-ŭn’s Take Care of My Cat (2001)

Bae’s character T’ae-hŭi follows to the letter, where others cannot, director Chŏng’s suggestion that each character should “have the tendency to leave if they are not happy with their owner.” This recalls a quote from Chŏng used by Shin, which I’ll paraphrase here: relationships change, and we must keep on walking

The film circles the themes of sincerity and distraction in friendships, and it ends, wonderfully, with a new perspective, accepting the contradictions and regret and pain of broken friendships that belong in the past and meeting the onward rush of time with hope and optimism. And Bae’s character is key to this. You may not think it from the film’s advertising but Bae’s character, T’ae-hŭi, is the most complex and intriguing of the crowd, as she follows to the letter, where others cannot, director Chŏng’s belief that each character should “have the tendency to leave if they are not happy with their owner.” T’ae-hŭi’s resourcefulness and personal motivation stems directly from that nomadic resilience. As for the friendship side of things, it’s probably of no surprise that some partnerships, wracked by issues of control and/or dependency, fizzle out before perhaps they should, and that others counterpoint these losses by giving us all a shred of hope and some dignity about the future; no one should be left alone. But ultimately, I think of the quote from Chŏng used by Shin: relationships change, and we must keep on moving. You may already have seen Bae Doo-na in The Host, The Ring Virus (this being the Japanese-Korean co-production, made after Ringu) or even Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite (unfortunately still unavailable in this country), but if you have seen and liked Koreeda’s heartfelt Nobody Knows, which recently screened in the UK on BBC Three I believe, then give Chŏng’s Take Care of My Cat a go; it’s a Korean gem.

22 April, 2009