2. Return to Seoul, dir. Davy Chou
Am I alone out here? I have not seen this on any other Top 10/15/whatever list for 2023. I guess Return to Seoul got lost in shuffle somehow. Many critics got to see in it 2022 at festivals, it released very early in 2023 for anything close to a wide audience. Maybe it has a more difficult task in finding its exact "lane" to market itself. Return to Seoul is a French film about a French woman of Korean descent, often using English as a neutral language in what is to her a foreign country. Also, it was made by a French-Cambodian director, so this was Cambodia's entry for Best International movie at the Academy Awards last year. All that confusion of identity and place in terms of marketing might be fitting actually.
Return to Seoul follows Freddie Benoit (Ji-Min Park) across three visits to Korea over the course of five years. This is the country of her birth but not her country, since she was adopted by French parents and thinks of herself as a French woman. She claims the first visit is a complete accident, merely a result of a mix-up after her planned flight to Tokyo was cancelled. While she acts like just a tourist out for a good time of Korean hot pot, Soju, sex with a guy she met that night, she is also searching for herself. Tena (Guka Han), the young manager at Freddie's hostel, helps Freddie connect with Korean adoption agencies and eventually meet her biological family.
Freddie's father (Oh Kwang-rok) and his family take her in with aggressive speed, which pushes Freddie away. Meanwhile her mother does not answer the message at all. Meanwhile Freddie is not making the best life decisions either. She is stuck between identities and things are moving way too fast. The sudden switch to "just out for a good time" desperately dancing at a bar alienates her new friends. Each time we meet Freddie in each subsequent visit to Seoul, she seems to be in a worse place, in relationship she torpedoes on a sudden whim, in an arms-dealing job, and still unsure of herself.
Obviously the comparison has to be made with yesterday's movie, Past Lives, which is also a movie about conflicts between Korean and Western identities. It was a hard call choosing between the two, one is a movie about a Korean woman living in the West, one is a movie about a Western woman in Korea, both feeling intense cultural pulls by their ethnicity. Return to Seoul is more about the feeling of being "owned" by your ethnicity, which is a disturbing concept in a way, especially when you're young and do not want to be defined by anything other than yourself. Everybody wants Freddie to be Korean, Freddie just wants to be Freddie.
I do need to talk about Ji-Min Park, whose performance as Freddie is my single favorite in all of 2023. Best Actress of the Year, the Academy already got it wrong. She is incredible in this movie. At times shes is coolest person who has ever walked the Earth. Then at other times, she's intensely vulnerable, growing more and more quiet not just because of the language barrier. Her great strength as an actress is that smile, pictured above. Slightly crooked, slightly cocky, trouble-making, perfect expression for Freddie when she's at her strongest. Of course everybody falls in love with her in Korea, how could you not? When her face is neutral, she becomes guarded, just another face in the jumble of a Seoul street, anonymous to everybody, even herself. I want to see Ji-Min Park in a million movies now, she should be a super star.
Return to Seoul is a great view of South Korea. It's beautifully-shot, both in the hot chaos of nightclubs and the still cool tranquil air of a morning after. This is kind of movie that makes you want to get really drunk on Soju. (Never a bad choice, until it's really a bad choice.) I need to go to Korea one day.
I also need to compare Return to Seoul to one of my favorite movies of 2022, The Worst Person in the World. Both films about a young person struggling for identity and refusing to be owned by the men or nations in their lives. In retrospect, I should have made that MOTY 2022. I may regret not giving the prize to Return to Seoul too. I really love Return to Seoul's ending, is a terrible rejection, it should be a heartbreaking nihilist non-answer. But also, we see Freddie one last time, now on her own, backpacking across the country, finally seeming content with herself. Somehow at peace in the stillness and quiet, finally able to live with herself as herself. Nothing in particular happened, there was not a great lesson or moment of clarity. She seems like she just grew up. And the only thing that can make that happen is time. Luckily, for most of us at least, there's always more of it.
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