Davy Chou, the writer and director of "Return to Seoul," sets the tone of Freddie's visit and several scenes in the years to come in just one early scene. She immerses herself in an uncomfortable environment, one that will elicit repressed emotions in both her and her family. Her unwillingness to conform or observe cultural norms can be interpreted as Western arrogance, but it is also her way of protecting her independent, free-spirited self from expectations. She's not interested in coddling men's emotions, and there's only so much sadness she can take from her guilt-ridden biological family.
Her father (Oh Kwang-rok) drinks and sends her heartfelt emails about his life regrets in an attempt to persuade her to stay in Korea. Her grandmother (Hur Ouk-Sook) cries at night while praying for forgiveness during her brief stay with her father and his family. It's just too much for Freddie to bear. "He needs to understand that I'm French now," she says angrily of her father at one point. My family and friends are present." Freddie's personal boundaries are drawn and redrawn as he goes through life's ups and downs, heartbreaks, and career paths. After all, this isn't a film about Freddie returning to France; rather, it's about her evolving relationship with her homeland and what that means to her as a woman who travels and loves freely, with few ties to keep her in one place for too long.
Freddie's journey is taken out of Seoul and into the countryside, giving both her and the viewer a broader scope of her Korean history, from the metropolitan capital, where she is finally able to obtain a copy of her adoption records, to a riverside town where her father and their family live. However, in her search for her origins, she sometimes appears and acts as an unwilling participant, asking the bus driver to return to Seoul or rushing to the safety of nighttime escapism as soon as emotions become too intense.
Chou visualizes Freddie's journey under a cloud with cinematographer Thomas Favel, with many of the film's key scenes taking place while the skies are overcast, raining, or the streets are slicked with rain. Given the city's neon-lit scenes and nightlife, the mood is restrained yet solemn, sometimes even romantic. When Freddie is hiking with her adopted parents in France, one of the few brightly lit scenes occurs. It's a moment of clarity, but there's a time difference between what the parents and their child are experiencing. After she hangs up, she is on her own to figure things out.
As far as complicated characters go, Freddie is an impressive mix of conflicting emotions: angry, lonely, selfish, and resentful. But there's a wounded tenderness in her occasional vulnerable moments, like a bruise that never fully heals and will always be a source of pain. Even in Freddie's cruelest moments, when her antics push others (and, to a lesser extent, the audience) away, the actor's performance conveys that her actions are motivated by pain and self-preservation. Even for experienced actors, the role is a daunting one, but first-time actor Park brings this intricate character to life brilliantly. She gives Freddie her scowls, defensive body language, and impish impulses to occasionally cause chaos. As the years pass in the film, Park's performance matures subtly but not so much that we lose sight of the character we met pouring her own soju.
Freddie eventually learns to move and live in places that made her uncomfortable. Seoul was her home for a while, but now it's just a business stop. Her bosses refer to her as a "Trojan Horse" because of her ability to move between countries, but there's a sense in the film that she's still a woman without a home. "Return to Seoul" by Chou is an uneasy exploration of the concept of home and the heartache that comes with losing it, following an imperfect heroine on her emotional journey to find a home in herself.
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