Review of Return to Seoul / Retour à Séoul, directed by Davy Chou

The first time I saw Return to Seoul, it had not yet be released in the United States. I was covering my very first in-person film festival with MovieWeb, where I had worked as a film and television critic for about two and a half years. I had to quit because I was moving away to India for a Fulbright, and I was not allowed to be contracted at any jobs.

Anyways, I was at the New York Film Festival in 2022, where I was covering a handful of films. In 2023 I stepped up my game and did like eight or nine films, but I started small for my first in-person festival. Return to Seoul was one of the movies I covered back then, and I was supposed to interview Davy Chou, but then the PR people just never responded to my email after exchanging quite a few already.

This is one of those movies that sticks with you, so I think that’s why I wanted to return to it after almost two years of having seen it. I had never heard of Chou or the lead actress, who I think this was her first feature film, but this is a movie that has a lot of heart to it in some ways.

I’m rambling, so let’s just get into the review, shall we?

A young French-Korean adoptee returns to South Korea, her country of birth.

Our main character in this movie is Freddie, who was raised in France. Originally, she was born in South Korea, but then she was adopted by French parents, who raised her. Now 25, she decides to head to Japan for a trip, but when her flight to Tokyo is cancelled, she ends up in Seoul.

There, she decides to make the most of her impromptu trip, and befriends the local girl working the desk at her hotel, Tena. Tena speaks French, so she’s able to help Freddie out, as Freddie is unable to speak Korean. With a bunch of locals at a restaurant, Freddie sleeps with a guy, but also kind of scares him because she is very French in her mannerisms.

Tena, along with one of her friends, then informs Freddie that if she wants to communicate with her birth parents, she’s going to have to do it through the adoption agency. Freddie is in denial that she is in the country to find her parents. However, she still goes to the adoption agency, and she asks them to send telegrams to her birth parents.

Her birth father actually responds, and Freddie prepares to head to Gunsan to go and meet him there. Tena joins her as a translator, as Freddie still does not know much Korean after spending a week or two there. Completely understandable. But when Freddie meets her father, she feels slightly uncomfortable, yet still agrees to spend several nights with his family.

When she returns to Seoul, her father sends her a series of text messages saying that he regrets giving her up, and that if she stays in Korea, she can have a good life. Freddie stops responding to him because she finds this all too overbearing, then goes to a bar with Tena and the guy she slept with before. However, Freddie keeps mocking him and his affections, and Tena finds this very gross.

Freddie also tries to kiss Tena, who pulls away and tells her that she’s a sad person. Freddie then takes home the DJ from the bar, but finds her drunk birth father there. He then roasts her for not responding to his text messages, and the DJ runs away. Tena approaches, but then Freddie’s birth father grabs her arm and Freddie screams at him. She leaves.

Two years pass. Freddie now lives in Seoul, and is dating a weapons dealer. She’s thinking about her birth mother and whether if she, too, thinks of her. She tells a fellow adoptee coworker that her mother responded to the telegrams, and stated she’s not interested in meeting Freddie. Her father still emails her, but Freddie ignores him most of the time.

Five years then pass. Freddie still doesn’t really speak Korean and works with the weapons dealer. She no longer lives in Seoul, so when she goes with her boyfriend to meet her father, he performs a piano song he created. Freddie finds this touching, but then she breaks up with her boyfriend after dinner after he makes a dumb comment that Freddie is going to save the South from the North.

Right after that, she learns her mother responded well to a telegram from the agency. They meet, and Freddie cries as her mother hugs her. She then gives Freddie her email address.

A year then passes, and Freddie is emailing her mother, apologizing for not doing so after all this time. Turns out her mother’s email address is no longer valid, so it does not send. Freddie heads down into the hotel lobby, sees a piano, and plays the music in front of it.

Overall Thoughts

If you’re interested in Wong Kar-wai movies, I think you could really see the influence of his work in this movie. I find cinematic depictions of Seoul to be so fascinating, as I’m used to the Korean drama way that the city is filmed.

Regardless, this is such a solid story from Chou, and the lead actress is fantastic as this adoptee with a lot of inner rage and healing left to be done. This is an underrated indie gem, and the fact it tells a French-Korean story to me is so fascinating as an American.

Go watch this one if you have not already! You might find yourself pleasantly surprised.

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