Debuting at Cannes 2022 under its original title All The People I’ll Never Be, Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou‘s latest film Return to Seoul (OV: Retour à Séoul) is hitting UK cinemas in May and streaming platform MUBI later this year.
Marking the feature film debut of French-Korean visual artist Park Ji-min, Return to Seoul follows twenty-something Frédérique ‘Freddie’ Benoît (Park), a Korean woman who was adopted and raised in France. She ventures to South Korea for the first time since her birth, searching for answers from her birth parents while learning about a country that is so unfamiliar to her.
Delving into the international adoption of South Koreans, Return to Seoul offers a new perspective that adds another layer to Asian representation that has been steadily in modern cinema. Seeing an Asian protagonist speak predominately in French in South Korea plucks the same strings as Lulu Wang’s The Farewell and Academy Award nominee Minari, where the protagonist experiences a personal conflict between Eastern and Western cultures. Return to Seoul is no exception.
The core of Chou’s drama is Freddie’s identity as both a French and Korean woman. As soon as she sets foot in Seoul, she challenges everything around her and her discomfort from everything – from the language to local customs – is evident but chooses to hide it by booze and non-commitment. She is also aggravated by the efforts of her birth father (Oh Kwang-rok), who is overly eager to make amends and reconnect with her. Freddie’s resistance to him vainly addresses unhealed wounds while his continued efforts repeatedly cut them open, especially as he blindly uses her birth name Yeon-hee and expects her to jump at the chance of having a father. Although this threatens to cause the narrative to succumb to predictability, Chou curiously flips his protagonist’s narrative by retaining a heartbreaking realism on Freddie’s journey of self-discovery while highlighting the emotional impact of being adopted amid the diaspora of Koreans.
Freddie tries to control the emotional depth through her guarded nature. The sparse dialogue in Chou’s screenplay between her and the film’s supporting characters reinforces not only her identity crisis but her reluctance to embrace her heritage. As the film goes on, her attachment to her Korean identity slowly enfolds, as does her personal relationships, whether it is with her father or her romantic attachments. Despite some odd turns, it doesn’t heal her subtle unhappiness about the circumstances of her adoption, as well as exacerbates her need to feel an affinity to somewhere albeit anywhere.
The combination of Thomas Favel’s artistic cinematography and Chou’s careful direction visually build on Freddie’s isolation. It also capitalises on Park’s naturally visceral performance, gracefully conveying her character’s reluctance, confusion and anguish amid a haze of recklessness and heady musical interludes. Although she dominates the film, Oh’s performance as Freddie’s guilt-ridden father brings an additional layer of turmoil that delivers empty, nay unwanted, promises as a father but fails to understand her as a person.
Although it starts off slow, Return to Seoul is not your typical ‘fish out of water’ story. It intrigues audiences as much as it raises questions about the close-hearted Freddie yet Chou’s sensitivity to the narrative interlaces melancholia with Park’s engaging performance. The result is a complex, tender yet heart-wrenching tale of someone who keeps losing herself while looking for somewhere to belong.
Return to Seoul opens theatrically in the UK and Ireland on 5 May 2023 and will be available to stream exclusively on MUBI from 7 July 2023.
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Director: Davy Chou
Stars: Park Ji-Min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young,
Runtime: 119 minutes
Country: Cambodia, France, Belgium, Germany, South Korea, Romania, Qatar
