Return To Seoul (2023)
- Christian Keane
- Sep 16, 2023
- 2 min read
Davy Chou's second feature film after 2016's Diamond Island concerns Freddie, a Korean adoptee brought up in France who on a whim decides to travel to Seoul after her initial flight to Tokyo is cancelled.
She takes lodgings at a hotel and, after bonding with the submissive French speaking receptionist T retires to a local cafe with her, along with her shy friend Jiwan.
The sequence that plays out in the cafe tells us a lot about Freddie, (an astonishing performance by newcomer Park Ji-min, one that mirrors her own life to an extent) she can be manipulative, friendly, confined, and enter into casual sex with Jiwan at the end of the night that she doesn't even remember the next day.
We learn that her biological parents, who she's never met, live in Seoul, immediately flagging up some serious emotional baggage and raise questions over that cancelled Tokyo flight.
Freddie tracks down her real Dad whilst failing to get responses to telegrams sent to her Mum; at first, she is unresponsive to his elation and regret, understandably confused at experiencing such strong emotion from someone she's never met.
As the film unfolds, (it does so over a few years) we see the effect of meeting her Dad has on Freddie, both positive and negative. In one heartbreaking scene we hear her Dad's new wife telling her in broken English how devastated her husband constantly is over Freddie's abandonment; in the moment her positivity and happiness at Freddie's arrival somehow makes the situation worse.
Freddie's Mum becomes a looming spectre as the drama continues as we wonder if Freddie's seduction, manipulation and her discarding of both her own and other people's feelings can be attributed somewhat to her absent Mother, and whether or not she will eventually become a presence.
Return to Seoul is an exploration into identity and how much of our past can affect our present and future if we let it; and anchored by a superb performance from Ji-min, Davy Chou's next piece of work is very much one to be looking forward to.
7.9/10
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