"Xo, Kitty": Four LGBT Characters and Counting at a Private School in Korea

 

Xo, Kitty, on Netflix, is a spin-off of the "To All the Boys" movies, which I've never heard of, but it's apparently about a Korean-American girl who enrolls in a fancy private school in Seoul and gets embroiled in teenage-y love triangles. Or quadrangles. A review said that there are two gay characters, each of whom gets a teenage-y love plotline: two girls, plus Q (Anthony Keyvan) and Florian (Theo Augier, below.  That's a femme boy he's with, from the tv series Mythomaniac).

Scene 1: The Korean-American Kitty floating in the pool, talking to her rich long-distance boyfriend, but he gets cut off.  Yuck, way too much of her body on display.  She sees a boy-girl couple smooching in the hot tub, another feeding each other (gross!  the sight of adults feeding each other is disgusting!),and a boy-boy couple massaging each other (yay!  representation!).  She gets all jealous.  Everybody in Portland is hooking up but her!

A phone call from KISS!  Not the rock band, a prestigious private school in Korea.  She's in!  After an antiquated "yes!" arm gesture, she rushes home to tell the folks.

Scene 2:  Kitty delivering a powerpoint presentation about "Kitty and Dae: Love Against All Odds."  That's how you're going to convince your parents to let you attend high school in Korea?  Maybe mention getting in touch with your cultural heritage?   Flashback to the previous movies, where Kitty specialized in hooking people up, including her Dad and his wife (like every protagonist in every teen tv series, Kitty has a Dead Mom).

She continues: while snooping around, she discovered that her Dead Mom spent her junior year in high school at KISS, and met her first pre-Dad love there. "Getting close to Mom and the Boy of My Dreams.  How about it, parental units?"

There's another five minutes of discussion, but of course they say yes, or it be lousy story.

Scene 3: Kitty at the airport, telling her life story to the bored ticket agent.  She moves on to sit down and text a friend.  Suddenly the most gorgeous guy on Earth walks past in slow motion, his hair blowing in the wind (so to speak), with every woman in the airport gaping at him.  He's carrying a KISS bag!  Kitty tries to cozy up to him, but he just sneers "No English" and walks on.  

By tv-only coincidence, he's Min Ho (Sang Heun Lee), a rich jerk whom Kitty will spar with and call "arrogant."  You know what happens next, right?

Scene 4: Establishing shot of Seoul, then Incheon Airport, where Kitty has humorous mishaps (she's still showing too much skin. Korea is a conservative country, girl -- cover up!).  She misses the bus, takes the subway, and gets lost. Apparently there's no GPS in her phone, and the hot guys she stops to ask directions speak no English.  Didn't you learn any Korean? Cultural heritage, remember?

She walks past a snooty clothing store, where a rich girl is shopping for black lace lingerie, while the clerk gushes abour her Dad's hotel in Dubai.  Then she walks out of the store in slow motion, while reporters photograph her and passersby gush.  

Scene 4:  Oh no, her limo hits Kitty, who falls to the ground, dead.  Actually, Kitty is fine, and asks for a ridee.  They're going to the same place, of course.

She turns out to be Veronica Lodge...um, I mean Yuri, the teenage daughter of ultra-rich multi-billionaire dude Mr. Han. Plot dump: she will turn out to be dating Kitty's soulmate Dae, but only as a cover so Dad won't find out about her lesbian romance.

Scene 5: Kitty was totally lost: en route to school, the limo passes every major landmark in Seoul!  Cut to Kitty's soulmate Dae (Min-young Choi) discussing his financial problems with the registrar. Plot twist: He's actually poor!  "You have until tonight to pay your tuition, or I'm kicking you out!"

Suddenly Dae gets a text from Kitty.  She didn't tell him that she was coming.  But he doesn't have time for romantic intrigues: he has to come up with the tuition money!

Scene 6: Good grief, another collision.  This girl is accident prone!  I assume that the girl Kitty collides with will become a friend later.

Meanwhile, the Headmistress summons Yuri (the rich girl) to her office.  Ulp, she's Yuri's Mom!  The actress played Sun on "Lost," making me wonder when we'll get a flashback to the mysterious Island.   Mom is upset because she thinks Yuri has a girlfriend, and if word got out, it would ruin all of their lives forever "So, are you canoodling with Juliana?"  "No, I'm canoodling with Dae.  Juliana is my cover." 

Scene 6:  Kitty has a photo of her Dead Mom hugging the Headmistress, when they were students at KISS in the 1990s.  But when she bring this up, the Headmistress says "Um...er..no, I don't remember...would you excuse me?  I need to escape."  The plot thickens.  I'll bet the Headmistress was dating Kitty's Mom.

Scene 7: Kitty moves into her gigantic dorm-apartment. She's jet-lagged, so she falls asleep, but wakes up in time for the big Welcome to KISS party.  She looks around for someone she knows, gets a icy stare from the Headmistress, and..another collision?  It's not funny anymore.  This girl has a problem.  

This time the victims are Min Ho, the rich jerk from the airport, and his bff Q, the gay guy.  But they stop bickering with her to stare in eye-bulging queer-representation lust at...Dae, Kitty's soulmate?  Kitty stares, too: time to surprise him by showing up in Korea, and get her first kiss.  

They rush toward each other like in a romcom, and hug.  But no kiss. "Um...er...um...KItty, I...um...have a girlfriend. Have you met Yuri?"  Kitty shatters into little pieces and runs away, colliding with a few more people on her way out. The end.

Beefcake: None.  But  you  see an inexcusable amount of Kitty's body.  

Gay Characters: the couple by the pool, Yuri and her girlfriend, Q (but he's not out yet), and maybe the Headmistress.

My Grade: A lot of banal plot twists and over-reaction to trivial problems, but I guess that's life for teenagers.  Good LGBT representation.  B