“Return to Seoul”: Film Review | skin 2022

Frédérique Benoît, Freddie himself, is a character that captivates everyone, including the audience. He is irrationally impressed with himself, compromising and often cruel. There are sincere search marks on the bottom of each actor, but before each step there seem to be a few slides to follow. For someone’s story to come to such an unpleasant climax in a moment as deep and emotional as the last scene. back to seoul He talks about the subtle storytelling power of writer-director Dave Chow and the role of visual artist Park Ji-min, who makes a strong impression in his first screen role.

Both of Chow’s previous films are documentaries shot in Cambodia. Golden dream and narrative resource diamond islandWho won the SACD award at Cannes Critics Week 2016. Taken on the eve of Sony Pictures Classics Cannes Film Festival, back to seoul This talented Helmer and the sensibilities of his artistic art house will appeal to a wider audience. Hard-to-like female characters are good, and uprooting and transplanting the film’s culturally specific story has universal resonance.

Tracing the eight-year span of Fred’s life, beginning at age 25, the film closes with scenes of his entering the hotel – a fitting shock to the score’s poignant story, shaped by calm and purpose. . When Freddie arrives at a small hotel in Seoul, the Korean doesn’t know a word, it’s the result of a spontaneous decision at the airport after his planned trip to Tokyo, a favorite place, became impossible due to the typhoon. “I had to go somewhere,” he later explains to the mother of a defensive adoptive father in France (directed by Vial Goldberg), who feels guilty and unhappy because Fred’s first visit to his home country includes you. father and father.

Fred doesn’t have a genealogical itch, but he soon came up with the idea of ​​looking for his birth parents, planted by hotel employee Tena (Guka Han) and Dongguan (Son Seung-beo), who have the ability to speak French. Dinner with him. They tell him about the agency that handled most of South Korea’s cross-country adoptions for decades and where their records can be found. Freddie absorbs the enormity of this opportunity in stunned silence. The only thing he has in Korea is a picture of a baby, with a woman he considers a mother.

As soon as the world of ra-ifs opens up in front of him, he’s busy chasing it, throwing a stranger into a 1920s soju-soaked diner in a diner. Following the rules of the local scene, Fred’s abundance is a spark of vitality. But there is also a confused sense that his theater of life is a protective shell.

Still, take advice from new friends. After a long night of drinking and a casual room fight with one of the restaurant’s guests (Kim Dong-seok), who will soon face his villain, Freddie heads to the adoption center. On these and subsequent visits, his subdued but busy conversation with the agency’s staff – much appreciated by Lee Myung-hee Chung and Kim Joo-yon – is a rare demonstration of the procedure as a tight roof under fermenting emotions. . Freddie learns his birth name, Yon-hee (with a nice twist, it means obedient and cheerful) and briefly contacts his father, who lives a few hours away in Gunsan.

He is played by The Kwang-rock, who is known to international audiences for his supporting roles in Park Chan-wook’s revenge trilogy. Contrary to Freddie’s warning, his father uses heart over heart. After the initial encounter, which also includes Freddie’s aunt (Kim Sun-young, especially good), grandmother (Hur Ouk-suk) and stepbrother, she starts texting Freddie/Yoon-hee any time of night after drinking alcohol. . Better than him. The translation program allows this; Korean is the only language he speaks. During face-to-face meetings, the translator is Freddie’s cosmopolitan, English-speaking aunt or the French-speaking Tena, who always softens Freddie’s cold, negative comments.

Chow “freely inspired” adopted from a friend’s experience, and aware of his own sense of displacement/relationship, as a French-born man of Cambodian parents who did not visit Cambodia before age 25. back to seoul It originally had an English title. All the people I will never be. It reflects the decisions that shaped Fred’s life before he could walk, but it also reflects the gap between the uneven parts of his life that make up the film. Three jumps over the years from the long first stretch that makes up the first hour of the film, this is a story built on ellipses, Dunia Sichov’s editing is accurate and sensitive. Any damage and healing that doesn’t happen in the meantime, we need to deal with, replacing the strong formulations in the park that give us hints.

Two years after Fred’s trip to Seoul, he lives there, a dark lipsticked night owl with his artist boyfriend (Lim Cheol-Hyun), lots of friends onstage at the Underground Club, a vague predatory “international consulting” labor camp, and sex. with older men like André (Lu)-Do de Lenkezaing), a French businessman. This puts him on the path to a new incarnation, which was revealed after the next story jump, during the pandemic. Its rough edges are trimmed with a sleek, elegant veneer, Freddie is now a charming driver, where else? – Military-industrial complex. This is the work that depicts her new polite French boyfriend (Ioan Zimmer) infusing him with the brightest glow of a fairy tale. But another drastic change is to come.

Fred’s indifference can be shocking and irritating, but it’s understandable that someone so torn apart by their feelings would choose to be tough. Chou sometimes draws on worn-out film tropes like a woman dancing alone on stage, is clearly a rejection in some films about certain women, and almost always elevates a performance above the cliché. And so it is here, Park bringing Freddie’s pugilistic bite to the sequel along with his tangled desires.

Deftly representing Freddie’s cultures as he perceives who he is, Jeremy Arca and Christoph Musette make for rich and versatile music. Thomas Favell’s unobtrusive lens effortlessly follows every zigzag of the protagonist, whether he directs his attention to the thick darkness of the bar or gazes at the pale watercolor palette of a seaside town.

Chou influenced all of his actors’ performances, calling on some of them to make subtle changes to the story’s timeline. Fred’s changes are startling and dramatic, not subtle, but the park reflects them in vivid detail. And often without speaking, like Fred’s last visit to the adoption agency, when her face is softer, more open and vulnerable than when it arrived.

The final scene, which takes place in Romania (details are shown in the final subtitles rather than the film itself), revolves around 33-year-old Fred and, not coincidentally, Bach’s cantata, which he recites to Christ. Chow barely catches his martyred hero or savior. back to seoul There is no excuse or Hosanna. This applies to solo travel, heavy luggage and receiving strangers – the things in life.