Hearty Paws
Oh Dal-gyoon
It begins innocuously enough with 11-year-old Chan stealing a puppy for his sister, So-I, on her sixth birthday, and christening it Maeum (literally heart).
But just as you begin to settle down for a feel-good movie, the death of an adorable character makes you sit up and pay attention.
Director Oh Dal Gyoon has coaxed winning and moving performances from his child stars as well as from the four-year-old Labrador retriever, Dal-i.
The dog is pretty much treated as a human character – the children constantly speak to it, and we are even given a dog’s eye view in a few scenes.
The problem is, how does the filmmaker sustain the story over 100 minutes? Enter the cartoonishly evil villain who lords over the bunch of street kids Chan falls in with, an absent mother and a nemesis for Maeum.
The cumulative effect almost overwhelms the modest charms of this Korean tearjerker. But not quite.
(ST)