Return to Seoul <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>

Return to Seoul

Return to Seoul is a quietly moving drama, written and directed by Davy Chou, a Cambodian/French filmmaker. It runs through a few years in the life of Freddie, played by 'plastic artist', Park Ji-Min. She's Korean by birth but was adopted out to a French family as a baby and at the start of the film, finds herself back in Seoul. On the face of it, she's there simply because a flight to Tokyo was cancelled, but we get an inkling that the desire to reconnect with her biological parents is working its way to primacy. Freddie can't speak Korean when she first arrives so she latches onto a young woman who works in the guest house she's staying at, Tena (Guka Han). The relationship is a curious one - polite, caring Tena seems to find chaotic Freddie fun....until she doesn't. At one point, during a spiteful night out, Tena tells her something like, "You're the saddest person I've ever met" and this 'slash and burn' style threatens to derail any bonds she may want to foster.

The film jumps forward years at a time and in each segment Freddie changes in one way or another - new boyfriend, more hectic lifestyle, new job, etc. Underlying all this flux is the nagging emptiness of absent parents, there, but not available. Like most people, I wasn't adopted and so I'll never know how those who were feel, but I reckon this film gets as close as any to illustrating the emotional turmoil involved. Freddie is all over the place, fun and energetic one minute, destructive and cold the next. If we weren't privy to her background, we'd likely find her a pain in the arse, or worse. Yet, her snarky, pernicious behaviour comes across as completely understandable. Ji-Min hasn't acted in a film before and it shows in her unfettered, naturalistic performance. Her glares are priceless.

There is a lot going on in the film, much of it elliptical, leaving some details for us to winkle out. This comfortable attitude to the narrative is possibly due to the director's intimacy with the story. Chou has said he developed this idea when a friend of his told him about her adoption, while they were attending the Busan Film Festival together. It seems some of the awkward family moments in the film mirrored their reality, hence the authenticity and at times, the oddly tense humour. Chou lets a few scenes run a bit long but I wouldn't say there was much wastage here, everything we see is required to progress the story, or more saliently, Freddie's arc. She's the focus, and so is the whole international adoption system by extension.

Return to Seoul plays at the Somerville Auditorium at UWA for the Perth Festival from Dec 12 - 18.

See also:

Some bits reminded me of Julia Ducournau's, Titane (2021), especially an extended dance scene. There were also very slight hints of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria (2021), which played at last year's Perth Fest.

Comments

Hard Truths

It's been six years since Mike Leigh stepped behind the camera for the disappointing Peterloo but this film is a return to tip top form. In fact, by my reckoning, that 2018 historical record was his only career misstep. And in Naked , Secrets and Lies and Happy-Go-Lucky , he has written and directed some of the very best British films of all time. Hard Truths reunites him with one of the stars of Secrets and Lies , Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She plays Pansy, an angry, fearful misery guts who can't help but annoy her family (and members of the public) with her constant, nasty invective. At first, her moaning is quite funny until the realisation that this woman is suffering takes hold. Pansy is married to plumber Curtley (David Webber) and they have a son in his early 20s, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who doesn't say much and stays in his room playing flight simulator games. Both these guys deal with Pansy in their own way, in quiet despondency. Her only real friend is her sister,...

I'm Still Here

Walter Salles directs this true story of Brazil's military regime and the people they 'disappeared'. It's mostly set in 1970/71 in Rio de Janeiro and focusses on the Paiva family, which consists of a fairly well-off father, mother and five kids. The first third of the film is all set-up. We're introduced to the family, their group of friends, their housekeeper, the local beach, it's a great, leisurely paced buildup. All throughout this opening though, there's a hint of intrigue - late night phone calls to the father, Rubens (Selton Mello); people off-camera popping in to pick up things; talk of envelopes; glimpses of army trucks driving along the beach road. Foreboding embedded. The family's middle-class idyll is blown apart one day when some humourless bastards arrive at the house to escort Rubens away to 'give a deposition'. Rubens' wife, Eunice is obviously worried but shows a calm exterior, mindful of her children, especially the younger...

The Story of Souleymane

The Story of Souleymane was the media preview opening film of this year's Alliance Française French Film Festival . This drama of frustrations, directed by Boris Lojkine, feels like a real story, probably not too far removed from the myriad other folk trying to find a better life in Europe (or other, more economically advanced countries than their own). Souleymane is a young Guinean bloke working as a fast food courier (ala Uber Eats) in Paris, but this is more complex than it sounds. For reasons soon made clear, he has to borrow the courier account of another guy to earn his bikkies. A simple request from the courier company to upload a selfie sees Souleymane dashing to the workplace of the guy who 'owns' the account, to get the pic. Just one of the many anxiety inducing trials this poor lad goes through. The nugget of the story is that Souleymane is a couple of days away from his residency interview. For whatever reason, it's decided that he must lie to the authorit...

Captain America: Brave New World

This is very much a soft launch for phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not terrible, just kind of a facsimile of earlier, better films, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier , which was a throwback to 1970s political paranoia films. There are also echoes of films like Telefon , The Ipcress File , The Manchurian Candidate and Three Days of the Condor . And there are clear parallels with the skip fire that is the USA these days. Harrison Ford's character, Thaddeus Ross, is the newly minted president and is presented as a blend of Biden (old and doddery) and Trumpington (a literal monster in the White House). I imagine it took a mountain of cash to persuade Ford to take up the reins after William Hurt (who played Ross in five MCU films) died a couple of years ago. The presence of Ford is actually one of the best things going for this, he still has that 'old film star' charisma. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, the old Falcon but new Captain America, d...

Conclave

Conclave (or Knives Out in Vatican City ) is a cracking religio-political thriller full of meaty performances and an Oscar-winning script by Peter Straughan that winkles just enough out to leave the audience with some work to do. Straughan has some excellent work on his resume ( Frank , Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , etc), so throwing him together with director Edward Berger ( All Quiet on the Western Front ), and heavyweights like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, was a recipe for success. The start is also an ending. The pope has passed away and the high-ranking priests are gathering to grieve and plan the succession. Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, and as Dean of the College of Cardinals, it's up to him to organise the conclave, the meeting to elect the new pope. I'll say now, one of the positives of the film is that there's not too much jargon, so it isn't completely baffling for us atheists. It actually plays a pretty straight ba...

The Monkey

What's this then? Modern horror, I guess. Or just another addition to the relatively recent spate of animal-titled films: The Lobster , The Crow , The Whale , Pig , Lamb , First Cow , Black Dog , Red Dog , Dog Man , Monkey Man , Wolf Man , Cuckoo , Cocaine Bear , and Hundreds of Beavers . Whatever the reason for its existence, this Stephen King adaptation is a curious beast. Osgood Perkins (son of old Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) writes and directs here. He also has a pretty funny cameo. The story starts with a bloke in a pilot's uniform (Adam Scott) trying to sell a windup drumming monkey toy (DON'T CALL IT A TOY!!). A bloody event occurs, not for the last time in the movie. Cut to 1999 where we meet Hal Shelburn and his twin, Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who live with their mother, Lois (an in-form Tatiana Maslany). The pilot of the opening scene is the dad/hubby who has done a runner, leaving the cursed monkey for the lads to find (though, to b...

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

This will be a quickie review as there's a pod to follow that gets into it more. But I'll say right now, I loved this doco. It's an excellent cold war history lesson pieced together from fascinating archive footage, much like Asif Kapadia's films, Senna and Diego Maradona (I guess his other feature docs Amy and Federer are a similar style, but I've not seen them). This film, directed by Belgian, Johan Grimonprez and edited by Rik Chaubet, is about the murky removal and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the (Democratic) Republic of Congo. It's a panoply of found footage, mostly newsreels and old interviews, interspersed with a jazz soundtrack and band visuals that really fit the era. Honestly, this sifting and compiling must have taken a fecking age, so big props to Chaubet and Gimonprez (who has some experience with this form of doc - Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. , for example). The 'stars' include the likes of Nikita Khrus...

Tatami

Tatami is the semi-spongy flooring you might find in an old Japanese house. Or in a judo dojo where competitors try to stay off their backs while trying to pin or throw the other (I'm hazy on the rules, as you can tell). That's how tatami is used in this Iranian/Israeli coproduction of the same name, directed by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iran) and Guy Nattiv (Israel). The film opens with Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her teammates on their way to the world championship of judo in Tbilisi, Georgia. We peg Leila immediately as a bit of a rebel as she's listening to hip-hop on her headphones. We also see her coach, Maryam (Zar Amir, see above) eyeing her suspiciously on the bus ride. When we arrive at the stadium, Leila bumps into fellow judoka, Shani (Lirr Katz), and they have a natter like fellow competitors do. But Shani being Israeli complicates matters slightly. Bout-wise, Leila is in the groove, dispatching opponents with relative ease. And here's where things get murky. The h...

All We Imagine as Light

This meditative exploration of the lives of women in Mumbai has a lot to say about class, religion, poverty, the patriarchy and the strictures of Indian society. This could be a tinderbox of themes but writer/director Payal Kapadia treats the characters and situations with a mild, sympathetic, even phlegmatic touch. We meet a nurse, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague and housemate, Anu (Divya Prabha). The two of them have relationships, tangible and nebulous, as well as interactions with people like Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) a cook at the hospital, and the temporarily placed doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who yearns after Prabha. Anu has a secret Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and workplace rumours paint her as a bit of a trollop. Prabha's 'arranged' husband married her and then promptly upped sticks to Germany (the arrival of a German rice cooker is loaded with meaning). The desperation and sadness of the people, especially the women, seeps through th...

High and Low

I caught this at the Luna back in November as part of the Akira Kurosawa retrospective and was happily gobsmacked to find screen one nearly full. It was the biggest crowd I've seen at the cinema for a long while. Kurosawa still packing them in! It's actually the first non-samurai film of his I've seen but it has his stamp of lingering, physically moving mid-shots and busy action within the frame of the wider shots. The setting is Yokohama, Japan in the early 1960s (the film was made in 1963). A shoe company executive, Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is planning a share takeover when his son's friend, mistaken for the son, is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands roughly the same amount of money required to finalise the financial coup, putting Gondo in quite the tsukemono! Mifune is commanding in the lead (odd seeing him in a suit) but detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) is the standout. He looks like so many of the oji-sans hanging out at the horse tracks of Jap...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog