A movie about reinvention, now not answer : NPR

Go back to Seoul is a movie that is simple to like: it has a killer soundtrack, a magnetic protagonist, and an exquisite cinematic backdrop full of wealthy colours and empty bottles of Soju. At its core, it tells a coming of age tale — one who demanding situations the confines of “early life” and “maturity” and contemplates the impermanence of who we’re.

Davy Chou’s 3rd function movie revolves round a 25-year-old French adoptee named Frédérique Benoît (Park Ji-Min), Freddie for brief, and her quest to trace down her organic oldsters in South Korea. Freddie is impulsive, electrical and without problems cool; she does what she desires and arrives in Seoul spontaneously with out a wisdom of the tradition or language. On the resort, she befriends a tender French-speaking Korean lady named Tena (Guka Han), who suggests she pay a seek advice from to the Hammond Adoption Heart. Freddie’s mom leaves the company’s telegrams unanswered, however Freddie is in a position to get in contact along with her organic father (Oh Kwang-Rok) — a person who’s sorrowful, a bit of of an alcoholic, and any individual who desperately desires to proper his wrongs from the ultimate 20 or so years.

Even supposing it’s Freddie who first of all seeks out her father, their come upon leaves her feeling extra disconnected than when she got here — and he or she starts to harbor a quiet resentment that continuously takes the form of anger. When he asks her to transport to Korea to reside along with his circle of relatives, she adamantly says to her English-speaking aunt (Kim Solar-Younger), “He has to remember that I am French now. I’ve my friends and family over there. I’m really not going to reside in Korea.” When Freddie’s father drunkenly displays up out of doors a membership, begging for her to speak to him, she screams: “Do not contact me!” He’s already on his knees.

The 3-part movie follows Freddie over the process 8 years; its colour tones shift along with her evolution — taking over hues of grey, deep reds and heat yellows. Freddie cuts her hair sooner than letting it develop, strikes from one lover to the following and pivots careers. However simply when Freddie turns out to have in spite of everything settled into herself, she surprises you. Does one in point of fact ever achieve a last state of metamorphosis? Or will we simply cycle between other variations of ourselves?

How Freddie chooses to exist is continuously maximum telling in moments the place she thinks no person is having a look: Brooding about what her lifestyles can have been as she idly stares right into a fridge full of Korean groceries; manically guffawing to herself after opening her father’s birthday ecard; throwing her frame around the dance ground. Park Ji-Min wields Freddie’s expressiveness with such regulate, it is onerous to imagine that Go back to Seoul is her first function movie.

All over the movie, track pierces thru barriers of language and time. In a single early scene, Freddie explains sight-reading as a ability that calls for the musician to investigate a rating at a look, overview any doable risks, and dive proper in. It is the approach Freddie approaches a brand new sheet of track and it is the approach that she strikes thru lifestyles. Amidst damaged translations and difficult emotional partitions, probably the most few occasions Freddie is in a position to really feel attached to her father is when he performs a tune he composed for her.

Even though Freddie is easily into maturity, her tale is a meditation on reinvention. When Freddie meets her organic father, she is reborn once more — to an unfamiliar circle of relatives, in an unfamiliar position. However coming head to head with a lacking piece from her previous does not make her complete; it simply introduces extra questions. Go back to Seoul is unconcerned with resolutions, and in truth, is going to nice lengths to keep away from them. As a substitute, it proposes that during an international filled with uncertainty, you will have to dive proper in, time and again — taking with you the whole lot that has been and the whole lot that has but to come back.