여자, 도시를 걷다 보다 묻다 - [고양이를 부탁해], [여자, 정혜], [이리]

Abstract

In Take Care of My Cat (2001), This Charming Girl (2004), and Iri (2008), the female main characters are portrayed as solitary strollers wandering deserted and empty cities. Following Michel de Certeau’s definition of walking as a space for enunciation, this paper will show that city walking in these cases is a form of spatial enunciation by which these characters can search for their identities while attempting to overcome an existential crisis. In these films, the active mobility of how the female characters walk transforms their urban space from a background to an acting character accompanying them. The female walkers’ acts of wandering and observing the environment surrounding them are their particular means by which to reveal the hidden stories of the spaces in relation to their past and present as they communicate with the city. Finally, their act of walking continues and becomes a journey to their inner spaces, leading them to question their identity. In this regard, the walking by the females characters in the urban space is referred to here as ‘spatial enunciation’ following the definition by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life.