Take Care of My Cat

The lost little kitten of the title plays a symbolic role in the coming of age of five Korean girls on the cusp of adulthood in this perceptive, creative, bittersweet import in which diverging lives remain tenuously tethered by cell phones and instant messaging. A gift from the most timid and insecure member of the modest clique, the kitty is rejected by its selfish, career-ambitious recipient on her birthday (too much trouble to take care of), and is soon passed around to the remaining girls--a pair of lighthearted twins who sell homemade jewelry on the streets of their gray and gritty port town, and finally Tae-hee (Doo-na Bae), the goodhearted soul of the group who tries to keep them all connected even as they grow apart. Displaying emotional insight and understated inventiveness (for example, superimposing the girls' cell phone text messages onto nearby surfaces so we can read along), Take Care of My Cat understands the hurdles faced by each of the young women--parents, loneliness, desire, poverty, aspiration, self-doubt--and wraps up its themes beautifully in a tentative but hopeful ambiguity that feels more new beginnings than the end of a collective childhood. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)