X
- 2022
- R
- 1 h 59 m
- 2022
- R
- 1 h 59 m
Summary 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.
Directed By: Davy Chou
Written By: Laure Badufle, Violette Garcia, Davy Chou
- 2022
- R
- 1 h 59 m
- 2022
- R
- 1 h 59 m
Return to Seoul
7.4
Where to Watch
Summary 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.
Directed By: Davy Chou
Written By: Laure Badufle, Violette Garcia, Davy Chou
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
87
100% Positive
37 Reviews
37 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 37 Critic Reviews
87
100% Positive
37 Reviews
37 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Go back to your roots, we’re always told, and you’ll find your heart’s true home. But in Davy Chou’s daring and mesmeric Return to Seoul, an adoptee’s search for her birth parents tears open wounds and unearths neither meaning nor resolution.
Return to Seoul begins as an intimately off-the-cuff stranger-in-strange-land story and becomes a sprawling epic of personal discovery. It’s one of the best films of the year.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 23 User Ratings
7.4
65% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
30% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
4% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 23 User Ratings
7.4
65% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
30% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
4% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
'Return to Seoul' is like a meaner version of 'The Farewell:' A woman who returns to her country of origin, where she must deal with a way of life that is foreign to hers in many ways. Ji-Min Park is exceptional, and it is hard to believe this is her debut. Writer/director Davy Chou builds an intimate story about the search for identity through a woman with whom it's difficult to empathize because of the way she creates a wall around her. At first, I was not so convinced by the time jumps in the plot, but then it became clear to me that these spaces allow us to explore other sides of the character, her contradictions, and a more notorious evolution.
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It’s the rare movie that can drop a long-take dance sequence into the middle of a pressing conversation without seeming the least bit mannered or aloof; the rare movie that only feels more honest as a result of its most flamboyant choices, and only makes its heroine more empathetic as a result of how she pushes other people away.
Though I missed the larger context of Freddie’s life, Return to Seoul’s commitment to staying in the moment creates an engrossing cinematic experience, an inextricable character portrait both intimate and fathomless.
The film isn’t inconclusive but its time and continent-sweeping structure is anything but conventional: and that’s what makes the mercurial Return to Seoul, in the end, so remarkable.
In her assured film debut as Freddie, Park holds your rapt attention.
A carefully wrought character study of a person who lives life with careless abandon.
We can all sympathize with the main character's backstory. However, her approach to reconnecting with her origins deserves none of our commendation. Her adoptive parents treated her well, so she has no right to act out defiantly to the people who only wanted the best for her. The main character is also traitorous to innocent people who helped her, and she was extremely careless with spontaneity for someone who grew up in a privileged French home. There are better Korean movies that tell a similar story. 6/10.
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It doesn't pack much of an emotional punch because of the way it rambles on in sequences that aren't adding much to the character's personality.
I never felt like I was fully getting to know her, but you still don't lose sight of her quest.
I understand that one can intuit that with several of these passages the director believes that this helps to know her better, but I felt at all times that there was a barrier between the character and her emotions.
A wall that doesn't break until the climax where it ends up breaking down once she gets the emotional catharsis she was looking for and clearly needed.
Return to Seoul is not a bad film but it involves immersing yourself in a story of identity and search for your origins that despite its quality, does not bring anything new that would give it an identity of its own that would separate it from other films with the same theme.
The film gets the job done because it works well enough, and that's commendable, it's just that it's a film that doesn't really stand out.
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Production Company
Aurora Films,
Vandertastic Films,
Frakas Productions,
Merecinema,
Anti-Archive,
Ciné+,
Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC),
Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA),
Cinémage 16,
Cofimage 33,
VOO,
BE TV,
Belga Productions,
Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral Belge,
Belga Films Fund,
Korean Film Council,
Seoul Metropolitan Government,
Seoul Film Commission,
Doha Film Institute
Release Date Dec 2, 2022
Duration 1 h 59 m
Rating R
Genres
Awards
Asian Film Awards
• 6 Nominations
Asia Pacific Screen Awards
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
Hamptons International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
