Return to Seoul

[박대선]

Return to Seoul

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Return to SeoulFrenchDirected byScreenplay byProduced byStarringCinematographyEdited byMusic byProduction
companiesDistributed byRelease datesRunning timeCountriesLanguagesBox office

Cannes poster

Retour à Séoul

Davy Chou

Davy Chou

• Katia Khazak
• Charlotte Vincent

• Ji-Min Park
• Oh Kwang-rok
• Guka Han
• Kim Sun-young

Thomas Favel

Dounia Sichov

• Jérémie Arcache
• Christophe Musset

• Aurora Films
• Vandertastic Films
• Frakas Productions
• VOO
• BE TV

• Les Films du losange (France)
• MK2 Films (worldwide)

• 22 May 2022 (Cannes)
• 18 November 2022 (Cambodia)
• 25 January 2023 (France)

119 minutes[1]

• Cambodia
• France
• Belgium
• Germany
• South Korea
• Romania
• Qatar

• French
• Korean
• English

$1.7 million[2]

Return to Seoul (French: Retour à Séoul) (original English title All the People I’ll Never Be) is a 2022 internationally co-produced drama film directed and written by Davy Chou, and starring Ji-Min Park as a 25-year-old French adoptee who travels to South Korea, seeking her biological parents.

Return to Seoul premiered on 22 May 2022 at the Cannes Film Festival under the Un Certain Regard section.[3] The film was selected as the Cambodian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards,[4] and made the December shortlist.[5] It received critical acclaim.

Plot[edit]

Freddie, who was born in South Korea 25 years ago and adopted by French parents, arrives in Seoul "by accident" after her flight to Tokyo is cancelled. She bonds with Tena, the desk clerk at her hotel, and sleeps with a man she meets with Tena in restaurant. Tena and a friend of hers tell Freddie she can only contact her biological parents through the Hammond Adoption Center.

Although Freddie first insists that she is not in Korea to find her parents, she goes to Hammond and learns that the agency can send telegrams to her parents, who can respond and allow Hammond to arrange for a rendezvous or ask Hammond not to contact them again, a request Hammond must honor. Freddie asks them to send the telegrams. When her father responds, she travels to visit him, with Tena serving as their translator.

Freddie is initially uncomfortable, but agrees to stay three nights with her biological father’s family. Afterwards, her father calls Freddie and sends her text messages declaring his regret for giving her up for adoption and promising a new life in Korea. Freddie finds his relentless attention oppressive and stops responding. She goes to a bar with Tena and the man she slept with on her first night in Seoul, whose declarations of love she cruelly mocks, making Tena uncomfortable. As they are leaving, she tries to kiss Tena, who rejects her and tells Freddie she is “a very sad person”.

Freddie tries to return to her hotel with the DJ from the bar, but is confronted by her drunken father, who scolds her for ignoring his attempts at contact and scares off the DJ. Tena then suddenly appears, but her father ignores Tena's attempt to speak to him and as her father grabs hold of her arm, Freddie screams at him not to touch her and leaves.

Two years later, Freddie is living in Seoul. She goes on a date with André, a weapons dealer, who tells Freddie that she would be good in his industry. Freddie tells him that it is her birthday, and that every year on her birthday, she wonders if her mother is thinking about her. At a birthday party thrown for her, she reveals to a co-worker who is also an adoptee that her mother has finally responded to several follow-up telegrams to say she is not interested in meeting her. It is revealed that Freddie’s father still emails her, but she largely ignores him. Freddie tells her co-worker to contact Hammond, but her co-worker says she is following advice to learn about the Korean culture and language beforehand.

Five years later, Freddie speaks broken Korean and works with André selling missiles. On a business trip to Korea, she goes with her French boyfriend, Maxime, to meet with her father. Her father plays her a piano tune that he wrote and performed, and Freddie is surprised how it moves her. She becomes annoyed at Maxime when he says to her father that it is Freddie's destiny to help defend South Korea from North Korea. After dinner, she breaks up with him, heads to the entertainment district, and wakes up the next morning alone in an alley.

Freddie learns that her biological mother has responded positively to another telegram from Hammond, sent by a sympathetic employee in violation of policy. Freddie and her mother meet at a Hammond facility and Freddie weeps as her mother embraces her. Her mother gives Freddie her email address so they can stay in contact.

A year later, on her birthday, Freddie arrives at a hotel seeking a room. She writes an email to her mother apologizing for not emailing her until now, and says that she thinks she is happy. The email message is returned as "undeliverable". Freddie goes to the hotel lobby and notices a piano with sheet music. She sits down and attempts to sight read the music, hesitantly at first, but soon producing a beautiful melody.

Cast[edit]

• Ji-Min Park as Frédérique "Freddie" Benoît, a French adoptee of South Korean descent searching for her biological family
• Oh Kwang-rok as Freddie's biological father
• Cho-woo Choi as Freddie's biological mother
• Guka Han as Tena, a hotel worker who helps Freddie on her journey
• Kim Sun-young as Freddie's biological aunt
• Yoann Zimmer as Maxime
• Louis-Do de Lencquesaing as André
• Hur Ouk-Sook as Freddie's biological grandmother
• Emeline Briffaud as Lucie

Production[edit]

Director Davy Chou got the idea for the film from a similar experience with his friend, also a French woman in her 20s adopted from South Korean biological parents, who traveled with him to South Korea during the filming of his 2011 documentary Golden Slumbers to meet her biological father and grandmother for the first time.[6] Seeing how emotional their meeting was, he decided to make a film on similar lines. Not knowledgeable in Korean culture or the experience of adoption at first, he researched these elements by talking to his friend and other adoptees as well as reading books, identifying some similarities with his own life as the son of immigrants from Cambodia who had left the country before the Khmer Rouge took over. Chou met Ji-Min Park through a "personal introduction" and decided to cast her as Freddie, her first film role, as he saw her as someone who "shared the essence of Freddie’s free-spiritedness". He further developed her characterization through conversations with Park, which "challenged some of his notions as a male director and helped him understand how a young French woman might respond to aspects of Korea’s highly patriarchal society."[7] Filming took place over six weeks in late 2021 in South Korea and Romania.[8]

Release[edit]

The film was first shown at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on 22 May with the English title All The People I’ll Never Be in the Un Certain Regard section.[9] Shortly before it was shown, MUBI and Sony Pictures Classics acquired the distribution rights to the film in different regions, with Sony Pictures Classics changing the film's English title to Return to Seoul.[10][11] The film is set for release in Korea during the first half of 2023 and will open in theaters across Europe in January and North America in February.[12]

Reception[edit]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 95 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sensitively attuned to its protagonist's quest, Return to Seoul uses one woman's story to explore universal truths about the human condition."[13] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 87 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[14]

See also[edit]

• List of submissions to the 95th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
• List of Cambodian submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film

References[edit]

1. ^ "Return to Seoul (15)". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
2. ^ "Return to Seoul (2022)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 12 May 2023.
3. ^ Ide, Wendy. "'Return To Seoul': Cannes Review". Screen Daily. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
4. ^ Kereya, Keo. "'Return to Seoul' chosen as Cambodian entry for Oscar". www.phnompenhpost.com.
5. ^ Giardina, Carolyn (21 December 2022). "Shortlists for 95th Academy Awards Unveiled". The Hollywood Reporter.
6. ^ Jung, Jia H. (2 May 2023). "Metamorphosis of Korean French adoptee Laure Badufle, co-writer and inspiration for 'Return to Seoul'". The Korea Times.
7. ^ Brzeski, Patrick (18 May 2022). "Cannes Hidden Gem: A Visceral Search for Identity in 'Return to Seoul'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
8. ^ Lemercier, Fabien. "EXCLUSIVE: Davy Chou's Return to Seoul is now in post-production". Cineuropa. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
9. ^ "The films of the Official Selection 2022". Festival de Cannes. Archived from the original on 2022-05-21.
10. ^ Barraclough, Leo; Keslassy, Elsa (22 May 2022). "MUBI Acquires 'Return to Seoul' Ahead of World Premiere at Cannes (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
11. ^ Ravindran, Manori (16 May 2022). "Sony Pictures Classics Snaps Up Cannes Title 'All The People I'll Never Be,' Renames Film as 'Return to Seoul'". Variety. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
12. ^ Lim Jeong-won (December 19, 2022). "French-Cambodian director questions identity in 'Return to Seoul'". koreajoongangdaily.joins.com. Korea JoongAng Daily. Retrieved 2023-04-08.
13. ^ "Return to Seoul". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
14. ^ "Return to Seoul". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved 21 April 2023.

External links[edit]

• Return to Seoul at IMDb

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Films directed by Davy Choushow

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Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film

Categories: 

• 2022 films
• 2022 drama films
• Belgian drama films
• German drama films
• Films set in South Korea
• Films shot in South Korea
• Films shot in Romania
• Films directed by Davy Chou
• 2020s French films
• Sony Pictures Classics films