After Freddie decides to return to the country of her birth, she discovers that her origins have a lot more to do with her life than she had first thought. The second narrative feature from French Director Davy Chou, Return to Seoul comes out of Cambodia as their official submission to the Oscars. Inspired by Chou’s friend, Freddie (Park Ji-Min) is a French Woman in a foreign country where she is unable to understand the culture and people that she came from. This becomes a unique and complex emotional burden on Freddie as she seeks out her biological Korean parents. When she finally meets her father, she realizes that she is unable to connect with him and what emerges is a women who is cast into an uncertain and rocky future. The rest of the film also follows the ensuing experience of Freddie staying their for two years as she keeps chasing a part of her that seems core to who she is. This tragi-comic character study mixes themes of discovery and identity through Freddie’s journey to carve her own path towards who she is and who she values.
As a man who didn’t directly experience the story that he had written, Chou himself hesitated to tell this story. Many of the films most humorous scenes are simultaneously devastating because of the cultural disconnect. Freddie’s translators will leave out her apparent anger and disregard for the feelings of the people that she encounters in Korea, including her father (Oh Kwang-Rok) and grandmother (Hur Ouk-Sook). What’s unique about Freddie is the burning longing inside her to find herself and her resentment to truly connect with the people she meets. In Korea, the people around Freddie want her to constantly fit into the classification of a Korean woman who follows their cultural norms and traditions. But she knows that she is not Korean, even if she looks like it. Still, some part of who she is lives in Seoul and it holds onto her. Freddie has deep Korean roots going back many generations and her new friends that she encounters at a bar even comment that she has the face with pure Korean traits. This is ironic considering she can’t connect with the Korea of the present, being someone who grew in a completely different country. The film sees Freddie using her time to continually redefine and reinvent who she is in this new country as she seeks to become connected to her Korean heritage.
A truly consistent standout element in a film that is constantly shifting and morphing is the central performance from Park Ji-Min. Chou wanted someone with ties to South Korea and France for this role. Park stood out as someone who was born in Korea and moved to France at eight. In what has to be the most impressive acting debut in some years, this non-actor is able to express the most extreme of emotions that fits Chou’s unique story. Most of these impressive moments see Freddie teeter between her inner rage at her early abandonment and the vulnerable melancholia that she holds inside of her as she searches for meaning in her lack of connection to her roots.
Chou remarked that Park’s connection to the material pushed her to question it and together they helped find the film’s unique voice. Freddie freely expresses her rage and curious spirit in a way that fits the narrative and properly subverts stereotypes about female Asian characters in film. In fact, Chou points to Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road as inspiration to make Freddie into a modern warrior. This comes out in the way that she acts and carries herself physically, both in her mannerisms and costuming. These combined perspectives help Park create a unique character who performs some truly energetic and heartbreaking moments. One scene sees her laugh in a way that communicates how much her character has trained herself to laugh in the face of pain and brokenness. It reveals her heartache while still being an authentic laugh. It’s truly impressive.
The other standout elements from the film were the cinematography and score. The film is shot in a hyper realistic manner that grounds us in the personal nature of the story while still using color and light to express the emotional beats well. Thomas Favel’s cinematography features inspired long takes that follow Freddie’s physical movement, illustrating her longing to discover herself. One dance scene in particular uses the music and camera to immerse ourselves in a woman who is trying to keep her trauma at bay and immerse herself in the moment, yet the camera stays with her showing how she’s cannot truly escape her pain and longing. The music creates these same moments effectively using both a great original score from Jeremie Arcahe and Chrtisophe Musset and the film’s soundtrack. Both use unique synth and electronic beats to evoke the modern neon soundscape of Seoul and the underlying anxiety that Freddie experiences.
Chou purposely puts us in a distance as the audience. He never delivers on the hopes that Freddie has to truly be at peace with her life. It’s a profound choice that may not always emotionally captivate the audience but creates a begrudging sense of realism that’s easy to be fascinated by. The final shot, in particular, leaves the film in a very mysterious place where we know Freddie is not at peace but the film still manages to find its own sense of bliss for Freddie. I really admire this approach to the film as it very much reflects the distance and vulnerability of those who are disconnected from their ancestral origins. As a Chinese-Canadian its easy to connect with Freddie’s desire to discover a part of herself that’s been held back by her foreign origins. The feeling of loss and emptiness illustrated is universal and Chou does a wonderful job making this sense of longing immersive for the audience. He keeps us with Freddie through her every move to connect, to lash out, to love.
This life will always leave us with holes and a sense of emptiness and ultimately the film asks what someone does with this feeling of being incomplete. It’s an emotional journey with many setbacks but one that still provides a spark of hope and that there is beauty and connection on the way there.
Even if it doesn’t come from what we think we truly desire.
Return to Seoul is in theatres on Friday, March 3rd, 2023.
