‘Return to Seoul’ Review: A Restless, Graceful Drama About Identity Formed Rather Than Found
variety.comJessica Kiang In order to return somewhere, you first have to leave it. So it’s arguable whether the initial visit in Davy Chou’s strange, deep, changeable and wise “Return to Seoul” even qualifies in a meaningful sense as a return.
25-year-old Freddie (Park Ji-min), the film’s charismatic but somewhat unlikable protagonist, was adopted by French parents as a baby, and has no memory of the voyage that removed her from the country of her birth.
But though she is the last to admit it, there is more to her jaunt to Korea than coincidence and idle curiosity. While Chou’s elliptical screenplay gently explodes many preconceived assumptions about the effects of adoption on adoptees, it is too clear-sighted to ignore the fact that whether biology affects identity or not, the mere possibility that such a link exists could exert a powerful attraction on a searching spirit not quite sure what it is searching for.
Set across eight dramatically transformative years in Freddie’s life, the film is divided in three, and rounded off with an epilogue — with the first section, detailing this first visit to Seoul, the longest and most straightforward.
Read more on variety.com
