Review: 'Return to Seoul' is a film where self-destruction and discovery collide

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Return to Seoul
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Director: Davy Chou
Writers: Laure Badufle, Davy Chou
Starring: Park Ji-min, Oh Kwang-rok, Guka Han
Genre: Drama
Rated: R for brief drug use, nudity and language

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) – Studio Synopsis: After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.

Review: When I sat down for a double feature of “One Thousand and One” and “Return to Seoul,” I unwittingly embarked on a strange journey into parentage and its relationship with self-identity. You’d never confuse either film with the other, but the themes in both films are perfectly entwined.

Freddie (Park Ji-mi), a young woman driven by impulse, finds herself in Seoul, South Korea. Though technically her homeland, Frankie was adopted at birth and South Korea and its capital city are a foreign landscape with strange traditions that bares little resemblance to her life in France. Frankie decides to try and locate her biological parents. It's a task that she’s ill prepared for.

Though set in South Korea, the bulk of “Return to Seoul” is in French. Freddie doesn’t speak Korean and throughout the film she is forced to either rely on someone to translate or resort to using English to communicate. Freddie never quite fits in. It keeps the film wonderfully off balance. Even as Freddie grows and adapts, she’s never truly at home. Her disconnection to her past propels the narrative. Where is the line between living life to its fullest and reckless self-abandon?

Park makes her cinematic debut with an incredibly strong performance that sees the actress transition through a myriad of emotions and mindsets. I assumed she was a “known talent” that I alone was discovering for the first time.

The film does linger a bit too long at times. It never drags, but a tighter edit would help to propel the film past its extended first act.

Thomas Favel provides some fantastic cinematography. I also found the minimalistic score by Jérémie Arcache and Christophe Musset intriguing, particularly the use of Kevin Haskin's drum intro to the Bauhaus track "Bela Legosi's Dead" (most would recognize it from its use in "The Hunger"). The band's cluby track “Anybody” is a great homage to New Order with a updated electro twist.