This refreshingly unsentimental film from Korean director Jae-eun Jeong portrays the bumpy road into almost-adulthood of five young women. Beginning with a snapshot of their carefree, giggling school days, they have been best friends in the industrial seaport city of Incheon, a commuter train ride away from the big city mecca of Seoul. During the first years following high school, their paths diverge ever wider. With tenderness and pathos, they get some hard lessons about the fairness of life and the nature of friendship. At times deceptively gentle, it carries an ache that rings with sturdy authenticity of that bittersweet time when adolescent friends, who had so recently shared almost every waking moment, retreat into the past.

Hae-joo has landed an entry-level job at a brokerage firm in the city. She is the prettiest, and has left a boyfriend back in Incheon. She relishes the dream that she will soon be one of the hip young professionals. Thoroughly self absorbed, she enjoys seeing her friends but prefers it on her terms and on her turf. When they get together for Hae-joo's birthday, Ji-young gives her a kitten she has found on the street. The cat gets passed from one home to another and becomes a metaphor for the lives of these young women whose lives have been set inexorably in motion. Once the closest two members within the group, Ji-young and Hae-joo are rapidly becoming polar opposites.

Without parents, Ji-young lives with and cares for her ailing grandparents in a dilapidated shanty. She's had no luck finding a job. Her situation and prospects are the most dismal of the five, even though her talent as a graphic artist displays the truest promise. Tae-hee lives with her large family and works without pay in her autocratic father's spa. She has her best moments since school talking with and typing poetry for a gentle young man with cerebral palsy. She talks of leaving the family home but feels trapped by economics and duty. The other two members of the group are Bi-ryu (Eun-shil Lee) and Ohn-jo (Eun-joo Lee), twin sisters who have formed a little business making jewelry and selling it on the street. They seem to cope mostly by maintaining Pollyanna smiles and good cheer at all times. They round out the genuineness of the group but the film revolves around the other three.

The sometimes brutal, sometimes amusing and always sincere actions and encounters of the girls, as they face the realities of life after leaving the protection of childhood, are drawn with affection and not without some humor. They strive to make the best of things but director/writer Jeong doesn't attempt to sugar coat the legitimacy of their concerns. Making this particularly effective is the fact that there is little intrusion from the typical teen preoccupation with boyfriends or parents to cloud its touching core. The sometimes dreary mood, created as much by the setting in the gray streets, alleys and waterfront of Incheon, is almost as much another character as are the ubiquitous cell phones always at hand. The text messages from one friend to another are displayed on the screen almost as prominent paintings on the wall. The changing relationships between the friends as they try to move forward knowing they are losing the intimacy and camaraderie they once shared, is like Tee Tee the cat who is using up some of his nine lives and yet survives. Although dogs are more highly prized in Korean culture, Jeong chose a cat to punctuate the emerging wanderlust and independence of these heartfelt characters. In her first feature film, she strikes a sweet and satisfying, but never saccharine balance and is a director to watch.