This is a very weird movie, in that it takes South Korean actors, playing as they do in South Korea, but in a movie done the European way. Once you get through this, you get to know Freddie, a woman that was abandoned by her South Korean parents and adopted by French people. Her introduction to South Korea doesn't go smoothly, she is self centred, toxic and manipulative, but also very loud, in a culture where all this is more than frowned upon. She makes everyone around her very uncomfortable, and by extend she makes you uncomfortable. The movie takes you on her journey to find herself, over 7 years, from the first time she arrives in Seoul. She tries to meet her parents through the foundation that allowed her parents to adopt her. She finds out that the foundation protects parents a lot more than she protects the kids, allowing her to send only 3 messages to her birth parents, before all contacts are cut off. She meets her father very fast, but struggles for years to meet her mother. In the meantime, she gets more and more toxic, and manipulative, hurting everyone around her, but putting it all on Seoul rather than herself. The character is extremely unlovable, which takes you away from having any feeling for what is happening to her. This is too bad, because the exercise of a European movie filmed through the eyes of South Korea would have been very interesting.
Review of Return to Seoul
