Freddie Benoît, the 25-year-old protagonist of Return to Seoul, presents herself as a nomad who’s wandered right into a overseas nation on a whim. The viewer meets her mid-drink at a bar in Seoul and shortly figures out that the chums she’s sitting with are primarily strangers, a random assortment of latest buddies she’s enticed whereas holding courtroom and pouring soju. Freddie, quick for Frédérique, is a French girl who was adopted from South Korea at beginning. She’s come again to seek out her organic dad and mom, a search that turns right into a jagged and irritating journey of self-discovery. She’s made the journey with out informing her adopted household and with little preparation—an method that fits the rebellious vibe she appears to be attempting out for the primary time in Seoul.
Played by the actor Park Ji-min in her debut function, Freddie is a whirlwind of appeal and chaos, one way or the other coasting by regardless that she doesn’t converse Korean and is a novice to all the customs. As she’s repeatedly reminded, politeness dictates that you just pour drinks just for others, not for your self, in Korean social conditions; to maintain her personal cup full, she retains inviting strangers to her desk. But she’s additionally motivated to make buddies as a result of she’s looking for new solutions to questions she typically can’t articulate—about her identification, her place on this planet, and her path ahead. The writer-director Davy Chou’s movie, which had a quick Oscar-qualifying run in theaters final fall however is lastly being correctly launched this weekend, is among the most stunning dramas of the yr to date.
Chou was impressed by a real-life good friend who, in her 20s, equally returned to Korea to reconnect along with her beginning father; Chou witnessed the reunion. But the filmmaker has one other, much more private hyperlink to the story: He was born in France to folks who had left Cambodia earlier than the Khmer Rouge took over, and he first visited their homeland on the age of 25, connecting with a tradition that was each far-off and acquainted. Chou’s first two options, the 2011 documentary Golden Slumbers and the 2016 drama Diamond Island, have been made in Cambodia. He didn’t know very a lot concerning the Korean setting he selected for Return to Seoul. But that distanced perspective solely bolsters the movie’s underlying sense of curiosity and thriller.
Freddie, by and enormous, is oblivious in Seoul: She asks her bar mates inappropriate questions, flirts up a storm, and ultimately blusters her approach into the adoption company that despatched her to France when she was a child. She strikes recklessly but successfully, due to the sheer pressure of her character. Freddie is difficult to pin down; she typically actually flees from the body. In a number of sequences, she dances with abandon, the digicam working frantically to maintain her in its sight.
Park’s efficiency is extraordinary, shifting from coquettish to threatening to needy with out ever shedding grasp of the character’s core anxieties about lineage and belonging. The movie resists straightforward sentimentality when introducing Freddie’s beginning household, who greet her with a mixture of curiosity and disgrace. They aren’t the ultimate piece of the puzzle; they don’t have easy solutions for Freddie as to why she was given up for adoption or, extra essential, why she feels such deep existential listlessness. Throughout the film, Freddie appears determined to know the contradictions of her identification—she’s not fairly glad along with her life in France or her relationship along with her adoptive dad and mom (whom we briefly glimpse in a candy but melancholy cellphone name), however she feels equally uncomfortable and misplaced in Korea. The impulsiveness she displays there may be considered with trepidation by her new buddies and her beginning household alike.
As the movie goes on, it jumps via time and portrays a number of radical transformations of Freddie’s character. With its ever-evolving protagonist, Return to Seoul defies neat categorization. It’s a low-budget character drama with the twists and turns of a high-octane thriller. It’s additionally a constantly satisfying watch that honors the problem of eager to be understood—and the reduction of lastly releasing that want.