Return to Seoul
The Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou explores identity in the story of an adoptee who accidentally finds herself in the city of her birth.
Although its predecessor, 2016’s Diamond Island, won awards for the French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou, it is Return to Seoul that has truly given him prominence by obtaining nine wins worldwide extending from America and Athens to Tokyo. Chou is both writer and director and the best things in this piece certainly mark out his potential. Nevertheless, its most memorable features, while helping one to understand the wide acclaim, sit beside other aspects which prevent the film from fulfilling the promise it contains. This is a serious weakness derived from more than one source but, regardless of that, Return to Seoul is an interesting film so I want to stress first its positive qualities.
Chou's greatest success here is to have found a storyline ideally suited to the theme that he wants to explore. He has explained how the initial inspiration for the film came from being present when a friend of his, Laure Badufle, who had been adopted and raised by a French family but who was South Korean by birth, met her biological father for the first time. That situation – right down to the need for a translator at that meeting – has been incorporated into Chou’s film but is now presented as the experience of a comparable fictional character, Frédérique Benoît (Park Ji-min) who goes by the name of Freddie. Finding herself virtually by chance in Seoul when aged twenty-five she decides that she will attempt to contact her actual parents.
Helped by a friendly new acquaintance, Tena (Luka Han), who works in a modest hotel and who speaks French, Freddie is persuaded to approach the Hammond adoption centre. They successfully trace both parents and the father (Oh Kwang-rok) agrees to meet her, but it looks as though the mother, living elsewhere and with no continuing connection with the father who has his own family, will choose not to respond. This situation, in addition to providing a personal narrative, is one which raises all kinds of issues about identity and character and what shapes us and, whatever the role of Laure Badufle in triggering the film, the issues are doubtless deeply meaningful to Chou himself given his mixed heritage.
Chou has revealed not only the work’s origin but something of the way in which it has changed in the course of its development. It has become a film which, ahead of a final Coda, is divided into three sections. About one hour in, there is a sudden jump forward of two years and then, some thirty minutes later, a further time switch taking us another five years on. There is a logic to this in that we are meeting Freddie at a time when she is still maturing and finding her way in life and, having taken a leap by meeting her birth father, she is nevertheless unsure what she is seeking here. Her uncertainties reflect the need for time to pass before she can really come to terms with being so closely linked to two such different cultures and that justifies the chosen structure for the film (Chou states that he admired that used by Barry Jenkins in 2016’s Moonlight).
The first hour of Return to Seoul finds the film at its best. Chou’s approach is not to set up detailed discussions about Freddie’s situation or to express it through an elaborate plot. Instead, Chou’s tone is one of quiet, observational authenticity which encourages each viewer to ponder for themselves all the questions inherent in Freddie’s situation. Different national characteristics including Korean social attitudes and even drinking manners separate Freddie’s lifestyle from that of Tena and her friends, but to what extent is the Korean style part of Freddie’s own being because of her origins? Class differences are hard to reconcile too. In addition to all this, Chou captures both the atmosphere of Seoul and the sense of Freddie passing through as someone who can't sense that she really fits in there having been away from it for virtually her whole life. Her inability to relate naturally to her father is most tellingly represented by her dislike of the extent to which he overindulgently keeps apologising for having sent her away for adoption in order to achieve a better education. What Chou gives us as here is not wholly original in that Return to Seoul does prompt stylistic comparisons with such a work as Hong Sangsoo’s In Front of Your Face (2021) with its intent emphasis on long conversations between its characters. However, Chou adds his own signature underlining the promise inherent in Return to Seoul.
But, if all this impresses, two features seriously reduce the impact. One is the decision by Chou to make Freddie such a deeply unsympathetic character. Throughout the film she behaves very badly to a series of characters, mainly the men in her life. In a very able cast, Park Ji-min in the key role is never less than persuasive and is adroit in suggesting the way in which Freddie is gaining experience of life as time passes. But believing in her does not mean liking her and, while we don't want a character whose behaviour is flawless, the film simply loses out by making her so consistently unappealing. The other weakness lies in the way in which the screenplay’s time jumps bring in fresh characters and let others go. The effect is abrupt and jerky as more underwritten roles crop up and not in ways that help to elaborate those concerns about belonging and the shaping of identity. Material touching on Freddie’s work for a French international arms dealing body is just one example of this. A late scene with Freddie’s birth mother is, in contrast, sensitive and beautifully judged, but one is also aware that her French adoptive parents are almost ignored. The Coda may suggest some degree of resolution, but it is vague and, overall, Return to Seoul despite all its awards comes across as uneven work not without genuine distinction yet also seriously marred by misjudgment.
Original title: Retour à Séoul.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han, Kim Sun-young, Yoann Zimmer, Jin Heo, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Son Seung-Beom, Lim Cheol-Hyun, Hur Ouk-sook, Dong Seok Kim, Régine Vial.
Dir Davy Chou, Pro Charlotte Vincent and Katia Khazak, Screenplay Davy Chou (freely inspired by the life of Laure Badufle), Ph Thomas Favel, Pro Des Choi Chi-youi and Sin Bo-kyung, Ed Dounia Sichov, Music Jérémie Arcache and Christophe Musset, Costumes Claire Dubien and Yi Choong-yun.
Aurora Films/Vandertastic Films/Frakas Productions/Merecinema/Ciné+/VOO-Mubi.
119 mins. France/Germany/Belgium/South Korea/Romania/Cambodia/Qatar. 2022. US Rel: 2 December 2022. UK Rel: 5 May 2023. Cert. 15.
