Mark Reviews Movies: RETURN TO SEOUL

Return to Seoul, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 16, 2023

Writer/director Davy Chou and star Park Ji-min get to the core of feeling alone, out of place, and groundless in Return to Seoul. That's because Park's character Freddie returns to South Korea, the country of her birth, for the first time since she was a baby. It's more, though, because Freddie is adopted.

Her loneliness isn't because she doesn't know anyone. In fact, Freddie makes plenty of friends and acquaintances on her years-long search for her parents, yes, but, more to the point, for herself in South Korea, but her loneliness goes deeper than the physical and emotional connections she might make or lose along the way.

Freddie is out of place, of course, because she was raised in France, only speak French and English, and initially cannot make out a single word or phrase of Korean. Beyond that, though, how does young woman define whatever "her place" might or should be? Is she French, simply because she grew up there and was entrenched in the country's culture, or is she Korean, because the biological parents she never knew in any meaningful way were? How can a person ground oneself with only uncertain ideas of what ground upon which they can stand?

There's a lot of sad and plain truth in Chou's film, especially in the way that these questions remain for Freddie, even as she seems to gain certain answers to the circumstances of her birth, her adoption, and what has become of her biological parents now. Those answers might change things, but they also complicate matters and feelings in ways that no one can anticipate.

Freddie certainly doesn't expect them—or, really, any of this, for that matter. How could she? The woman, in her early-to-mid 20s, arrives in Seoul on a whim or by accident (She's shaky about that explanation, especially depending upon to whom she's giving it), without any plan, it seems, except to have a good time. She gets a room at a local hotel, where Tena (Guka Han), the receptionist, starts talking to her, because the worker just happens to know French. Tena takes the visitor out to a restaurant with her friend Dongwan (Son Seung-Beom), where they talk about their interests and local customs.

The topic of Freddie's background arises, obviously, because her two new friends can't quite figure out how someone who looks so "traditionally Korean" wound up being raised in France and seeming so, well, French. Freddie explains that she was adopted, and then, there's the next, inevitable question from Tena: Does she plan to find her birth parents? One of the invaluable qualities of Park's performance, an astonishing debut, is how much she can communicate without saying a word. On Park's face, we instantly see that, while she probably hasn't thought of the specific logistics of finding her biological parents, it's not a question that needs answering, because of course she has planned to. It's almost certainly a thought that has come to her every day of her life since Freddie was aware she was adopted.

The rest of the story is about that search, which goes on for almost a decade in certain regards, but more importantly, it's about observing Freddie as she confronts a very particular dilemma. Almost immediately after inquiring at the adoption agency, Freddie learns about and arranges a meeting with her birth father (played by Oh Kwang-rok).

The man seems quiet, reserved, and almost frightened of being so close to the daughter he never knew (He now has a wife and two other daughters, from whom he hid Freddie's existence until hearing from the agency). After Freddie leaves and he starts drinking, though, the father keeps texting her, wants to see her again, and begins to offer her a home with him. She doesn't want that kind of relationship, but how does she communicate that to him? Is it even her place to tell this relative stranger that he expects far too much from her?

As for Freddie's birth mother, she doesn't respond to a request to meet, and after outright declining on the opportunity, the agency, by law, has to wait a year before it can send another request. In the ensuing years, Freddie doesn't stay in Seoul, but she keeps finding herself returning there, going through various changes of relationships and careers, and, in those quiet moments away from fleeting friends and raucous parties and succeeding in her job, always returning to the question of her mother.

The strength of this film is how attentive Chou is to Freddie's seemingly contradictory nature: how quickly she makes attachments and how she can drop them with equal haste, how she speaks as if none of the uncertainty about her biological parents affects her but acts as if it's really the only thing that matters, and how lonely she remains as all of these friends and family members come into her life. There is no contradiction here on a fundamental level, because such is the nature of one who desperately wants a specific connection—one she feels as if, on some level, she has never truly known—and comes to realize it may never be. The whole story becomes about how Freddie clings to the bonds of blood, even and maybe because of how tenuous hers are in this situation.

It's a heartbreaking film, not only because of the way in which Freddie's search unfolds, but also because of that deeper understanding of Freddie as one who feels destined to be abandoned and alone. Return to Seoul may not delve too deeply into these ideas, but it depicts that emotional reality with harsh but empathetic honesty.

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