Return to Seoul

When I saw the trailer for Return to Seoul, I thought it sounded like something my nephew would enjoy so I took him to see it last night.  We both found this complex exploration of one young woman's search for self to be incredibly thought-provoking.  Frederique "Freddie" Benoit (Ji-Min Park), a 25-year-old Korean woman who was adopted by a French couple as a baby, spontaneously decides to travel to Seoul when her flight to Tokyo is canceled.  She tells two new acquaintances that she is not there specifically to find her biological parents but she eventually ends up at the Hammond Adoption Agency and has them contact her mother and father to see if they will respond to her request to meet.  Her father (Oh Kwang-rok) responds immediately but, when she visits him and his family, she is repulsed by his emotional professions of guilt over abandoning her and she viciously rejects his pleas for her to move to Korea and live with him.  She returns several more times to Korea but doesn't attempt to learn the language or understand the culture, pushes everyone who tries to form a relationship with her away, and engages in reckless and self-destructive behavior.  It takes seven more years for her mother (Cho-woo Choi) to agree to a meeting when she is back in Korea on a business trip and, while they have an emotional reunion, Freddie refuses to communicate with her further.  She is clearly looking for an identity but she doesn't feel at home in either France or Korea, doesn't belong with her adoptive or biological families, and doesn't stay with any of the men or women she hooks up with.  It is only when we see her alone in an unknown location that she seems to be at peace.  Ji-Min Park, in her debut, gives an absolutely phenomenal performance because, even though her character is very unlikable, you simply cannot look away from her because of her chaotic energy, especially in a five minute scene where she dances with abandon to avoid her feelings.  I really loved the use of music in this movie because, in different scenes, Freddie uses music to bond with people, to escape from stressful situations, and, ultimately, to find herself (it features a fantastic soundtrack).  When she has no other label for herself, she becomes a musician.  I also really enjoyed the ambiguity in the narrative, particularly when things get lost in translation from French to Korean, and it is so interesting to speculate about what happens to Freddie next (my nephew and I had a very spirited discussion about this afterwards) because there are no easy answers about this kind of trauma.  The themes of identity really resonated with me (and my nephew) for lots of reasons and I highly recommend seeking this out!