A widowed single father’s life is suddenly thrown into disarray when his son’s decision to take in a local stray cat forces him to confront the trauma of his wife’s death in Hwang Soo-bin’s light-hearted drama, Cat Kiss (고양이 키스, Goyangi Kiss). Less a study in the inertia of grief than an empathetic tale of how caring for others can reopen a heart that was closed, the film leans in hard to its cat-themed metaphors of finding comfort and support in expected places.
In any case, since his illustrator wife passed away Young-hee’s (Oh Dong-min) been unable to venture into her drawing room without having a panic attack. That might be why his son, Jae-in (Shin sua), decides to hide a kitten in there that he claims followed him home from a school trip. Unfortunately, Young-hee is allergic to cats and immediately wants to get rid of it but is convinced not to by Ro-un (Ryu Abel), an energetic and cheerful woman who runs a local repair shop and comes to fix their leaky roof.
Fixing the roof is partly what she carries on doing, bonding with the family and trying to help them move on with their lives through turning the drawing room into a cat room in a kind of compromise with Young-hee’s allergies only it’s as much the emotional connection that he’s allergic to as the feline itself. The same might be said of his odd relationship with his neighbours, a family of three who live across the way that includes a little girl Jae-in sometimes plays with. Finding Young-hee collapsed after a panic attack, the neighbours tell him he can always come knock on their door if he has a problem but he isn’t really ready for that kind of connection yet.
Young-hee’s grief-stricken inertia is plain from his expressionless face and generally melancholy aura. Even Jae-in remarks that he’s always sad a little moody. Ro-un’s mission is to make the family smile again though she has an uphill battle but equally, Young-hee does not try to deflect her attentions which some might see as overbearing given that she’s more or less forced him to erase the last traces of his late wife from their home, but as if responding to a cat kiss slowly allows her into their lives and hearts as a more positive influence amid their melancholy.
She meanwhile is carrying a heavy burden of her own which goes a little beyond the loss of her cat which closely resembles that rescued by Jae-in. They are all in a sense stray cats looking for someone to take care of them and restore some of what they’ve lost. Even the family across the way which Young-hee had so envied has its sources of tension stemming from the unfulfilled desires of the parents with salaryman dad dreaming of becoming a dancer and the mother looking for more things to do outside the home now her daughter’s a little older. The daughter meanwhile has a hangup of her own in regards to traditional femininity, resentful that people have said Jae-in is prettier than she is despite being boy, and criticising her being “strong”.
Another strong woman, Ro-un tells her not to be afraid of her physicality though her choice of words somehow backfires. A kind of runaway herself, she too is trapped in a state of inertia by a traumatic past she hasn’t fully dealt with while remaining upbeat and relentlessly cheerful as a kind of coping mechanism for the blows life has dealt her. Focussing on the cat provides them with a roundabout way of communicating and an opportunity for developing a shared intimacy that gently guides them back into the world.
Despite the melancholia of the situation, Hwang keeps the tone light and adds a little quirky, down to earth humour including small instances of animation echoing Young-hee’s late wife’s occupation as an illustrator. Somewhere between offbeat romcom and grieving drama, the film is a kind of testament to the healing power of cats along with their tendency to find good people to take care of them just as those who become cat butlers slowly begin to open their hearts while generally making the world a slightly less unfriendly place.
Cat Kiss screened as part of the 18th Season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.
International trailer (English subtitles)
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