There’s no cinematic terrain as potent as an actor’s face. Seeing on it a flexible configuration of internal needs, cultural mores, and wayward desires, writer-director Davy Chou understands this truth intimately in Return to Seoul. He grounds his story in the contours and illuminations of lead Park Ji-min’s features and expressions in a debut performance so piercing it makes the entire film move like a breathing poem.
Park plays Frédérique “Freddie” Benoît, a 25-year old Korean woman adopted by a white French couple soon after her birth, who has returned to her ancestral home in a fluke. Her original flight to Tokyo was disrupted by a typhoon, and she opted for the first destination available, or at least that’s how she puts it to her mother in a terse video call. Freddie finds herself at a modest hotel in Seoul, where she studies the face of front-desk worker Tena (Guka Han) with Korean pop songs blaring over her headphones. Freddie’s own features fill the frame, and the audience studies her in kind; there’s evidence of something wild in those eyes. She is a live wire given form, flesh, sinew. She’s a woman defined by what she refuses to be, and Chou appropriately refuses to offer any heartwarming, simple resolutions to the dilemmas marking her life.
Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin February 27 - March 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin February 27 - March 12, 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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