in “Return to Seoul”, a burning quest for origins

IN SOME PERSPECTIVE

At 38, Davy Chou, a French director of Cambodian origin, made himself known through a documentary (golden sleep, 2012) and a feature film (Diamond Island, 2016), both remarkable, located in Cambodia.

This time he moves away from this intimate prospecting to shoot in Seoul the story of a young woman born in Korea, but adopted at birth by a French couple. Freddie is 25 years old, a face that loves the camera, a devouring energy, a hardness that one would be inclined to relate to the gap that marks its history.

Following a canceled flight to Japan, she takes a ticket to Seoul – at least that’s the version she gives to her French mother. At the same time that she burns her youth there at both ends, she undertakes, not without ambiguity or suffering, the necessary steps to reunite with her parents.

Adopting an aesthetic influenced by a certain Chinese cinematographic modernity (electrifying graphics, ellipses, exacerbated plastic power), Davy Chou certainly avoids the pathos that could burden his subject and paints a drypoint portrait of a young woman forever marked by precariousness of his birth. At the same time, he deprives himself of a depth in his approach to the characters, which seems to be lacking, given the delicacy and complexity of his subject, both the intelligibility and the sensitivity of his narrative.