Return to Seoul

In the preamble for another recent review, I discussed the idea of the delayed coming-of-age story. However, I didn’t say much about my personal thoughts on them.

I love them, at least in theory. Of course, they can and have been done very poorly, so it’s not without caveats. But the idea of exploring who this character is in their twenties or thirties enables the story to wrestle with more mature and dark concepts. They’re also more likely to be dramas, since instead of focusing on how funny it is for a teenager to act like an adult, we’re concerned with someone who’s been trying to begin their life but has been held back in some way. They’re almost more tragic, even though there’s often at least some aspect of their issues which are self-inflicted.

If I’m being honest, it’s also because I see a lot of myself in these characters. Not in their actions: much of what they do is far more bold and spontaneous and off the beaten path than the journey I’ve taken in my fairly quiet, predictable, privileged life. But internally, I have many of the same doubts and insecurities and questions and discomforts and restlessness. I struggle with complacency, with bitterness, with the feeling that I’m somehow not as much of an adult as my parents, despite having been out of their house since graduating from high school. I worry that I’m not living life to the fullest, while also being a bit scared of making any major changes, especially on a whim. Through people like Julie in The Worst Person in the World or Alana in Licorice Pizza, I can perform a thought experiment, explore what it would be like to be a different person who made very different choices from minute to minute. I can inhabit another’s headspace and live alongside them, if only for a little while. None of their specific circumstances line up with mine, of course, which is why I respond so well to strongly written characters, where I can envision their lives as they exist beyond the boundaries of the movie.

Return to Seoul concerns such a person in Freddie (Park Ji-min). Having grown up in France, she’s come to South Korea seemingly on a whim, and while there decides to go to the adoption agency to find out who her birth parents were. Across her two weeks in the country, she is put back in touch with her birth father (Oh Gwang-rok), and yearns to find her birth mother, all while trying to come to terms with this foreign country she’s ostensibly “from”. Returning a few times over the course of eight years, we see her grow and change and mature and stagnate, both individually and with respect to her country of birth.

While that describes the plot, the story is really focused on Freddie herself. We meet her in a Korean restaurant where she’s chatting with her new friends Tena (Guka Han) and Dongwan (Son Seung-beom). She talks about being good at reading people, then proceeds to sit down with some strangers at a nearby table, drags her friends over, then invites over some random women from another nearby table. They all get trashed, slowly teach her about Korean culture, and bond. The next morning, she wakes up in bed with one of the guys, unable to remember the night before and if they had sex. Unable to bridge the language barrier without Tena to translate, she demands they have sex again, so she’ll remember this time.

This is one of the most arresting and stark and incredible character introductions I’ve ever seen. She’s immediately fully formed, unrecognizable, aggressive, frank, and somehow both unpredictable yet familiar. She is a force, chaos incarnate, and it’s clear that instead of fighting it or trying to organize it, she’s leaned in and embraced it, made it part of herself. Freddie is determined to have a good time. When small bits of reality slip through, she quickly and harshly knocks it aside, absolutely unwilling to deal with it.

Take her relationship with her birth father, a terminally sad and broken man. His very existence and embrace of his emotions are an affront to her. Even as she agrees to spend a few days at his family’s house, she feels no warmth for him, no sympathy. Freddie resents his sorry state, has no time for his tears or his faith, and is almost angry at how happy he is to see her. Once she departs, she is annoyed by the sappy texts he starts sending her, as well as the drunk phone calls she receives with him blubbering. His vulnerability puts the lie to her own calm, cool, collected exterior. She thrives on the distance between them, as it allows her the freedom to run away as she sees fit.

That distance is something she seems to both treasure and dislike during her entire trip. She is automatically separated from most people she meets by language: she speaks French and pretty good English, they speak Korean and almost no English. Tena serves as translator when she’s around, but we see in real time as she’s not only translating the words but the cultural interaction and personalities. It’s most noticeable during the first meal with Freddie and her birth father’s family. Freddie’s curtness is softened for her birth family’s ears, and their pleas for forgiveness and requests for Freddie to come live with them are downgraded. Neither side is ready for the full force of the other, and things still get tense, leading to a mini-climax at the midpoint of the film before we jump ahead two years.

Freddie is incredibly difficult and cold, which can make her a very unlikable person. But from the audience perspective, she is also very sympathetic. We don’t get much background on why she’s like this, apart from the general idea that in some sense she’s a foreigner in her own country. Her happiness is a front, and she just doesn’t know how to express anything else. Despite her denial, her birth parentage becomes so important to her as she tries desperately to understand this place. First, as a tourist. Then, as a resident. And finally, on a business trip. They all represent different ways of her attempts to connect with Korea, none successfully.

This is Park Ji-min’s acting debut¹, and it is a transcendent performance. Absolutely mind-blowing in its starkness and subtlety. She conveys worlds of ideas and emotion with a single, held glance. The slight wrinkling of her chin as Freddie prevents herself from crying are a physical manifestation of the maelstrom inside. Her charm, her ease and comfort navigating this world she’s unfamiliar with, her ability to flip on a dime from an intense and personal conversation to dancing with joy and spontaneity. You easily buy her predisposition for ignoring customs which seem silly to her. She feels simultaneously grounded and real, and like no one who could possibly exist. Park and director Davy Chou collaborated to create a character like no other, and one which is endlessly compelling. It is absurd that she didn’t receive an Oscar nod (the movie received a one-week limited release in December 2022 to qualify), but one can hope that with its wide release in much of the world this year she will get the recognition she deserves by critic associations.

It is hard to truly capture the experience of this movie on the page. The vibes play such a strong role, from the looks to the excellent score (composed by Jérémie Arcache and Christophe Musset) to the lighting to the stillness to the soundscape of her world. It’s gorgeous, it’s tragic, it’s moving, it’s perfect. This is my favorite film of the year so far, and is one of the best films I’ve seen this year period. Do yourself a favor and make some time to catch it.