After Cambodia 2099 at the Directors' Fortnight in 2014, then his first feature film, Diamond Island, at the Critics' Week in 2016, French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou returned to Cannes this year with his new film Return to Seoul, presented in the Un Certain Regard selection at the Cannes 2022 Festival.
The film tells the story of Freddie, 25 years old, who returns for the first time to his native country, South Korea, by the greatest of chances or by a stroke of fate - a flight cancelled for Japan. In this foreign country, he begins a quest for his origins , which includes a reunion with his parents.
This quest for identity in order to better understand oneself is an approach common to many adopted Koreans - nearly 200,000 Korean children were, in fact, put up for international adoption after the Korean War in 1953. But Davy Chou manages to draw from this perfectly circumscribed journey in the adoption centers, from written requests to follow-ups leading to a meeting or a refusal by the biological parents, a moving film without ever falling into eplorement.
Magnetic and present in almost all the shots of the film, Park Ji-Min, whose first role in the cinema, is breathtakingly accurate and intense, even in her silences filled with unspoken words and secrets, and her hard looks, sometimes bathed in real anger, sometimes in great vulnerability.
Full of excesses and neuroses, questionings and fears, she takes us with her to the restaurant, in an opening scene where the soju flows in a hongsangsooesque way, in the rain-soaked streets of Seoul and in the underground depths of the Seoul night where Davy Chou films with ardor and aestheticism the frenzy of the party and the bodies and where excesses are still in order while waiting for the big day, the first meeting with the biological father - played by Oh KwangRok, often seen in Park Chan-wook - which obviously doesn't go as planned
Return to Seoul is one of those remarkable works that will haunt us for a long time. One of our favorites of the Cannes Film Festival 2022, undeniably.
Released in theaters on January 25, 2023
January 2024 cinema releases: list of films in cinemas and opening times near you
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Dates and Opening Time
From January 25th, 2023 to February 14th, 2023
January 2024 cinema releases: list of films in cinemas and opening times near you
