_Return to Seoul_

[septimus_...@q.com]

We should be so thankful for French cinema. _Return to Seoul_,
directed by French-Cambodian and starring French-Korean Park
Ji-min as Frederique ("Freddie"), is the kind of authentic,
hard-to-pin-down search-for-identity and individual destiny
films one hardly finds in the U.S. anymore, thanks to the
obsession with group-identity and tribalism on these shores.

When the film begins, a French-speaking Korean hotel clerk
is talking to a customer off-screen. Her head, in close-up,
splits the background which are of two different designs
and color schemes. And that is the dominant visual motif
of _Return to Seoul_, about the contrast between French
and Korean cultures experienced by an adoptee brought up
in France and returning to Asia for the first (and second,
third) time(s). Except that bilingual Tena (Guka Han)
isn't the main character; after that early misdirection we
are introduced to Freddie, who in the beginning doesn't
speak a word of Korean. She has flown to Seoul on a whim,
and contacts the adoption agency on another. Freddie is
a free spirit, part-time musician, and party-animal. Her
weepy, alcohol biological father and her grandmother
(even more of a drama queen) oppress her while the
biological mother, estranged from everyone, refuses to
meet her. But she goes back to Korea for business deals
and later as a arms-dealer (Korea happens to make one
of the most advanced main battle tanks, among other
hardware), despite being on good terms with her French
family. (The mother Regine Vial is an assistant on Eric
Rohmer's films!) She learns a bit of Korean, dances in
discos pounding with punk rock, sleeps with men of all
ethnicity only to ditch them, and gets on better
understanding with the father. One wonders if her
trips are not excuses to keep up the search for her
birth mother. At the end of the film she is hiking
alone, financially and emotionally secure. She comes
upon another hotel (apparently in Romania), tries to
contact the elusive birth mother again, and plays
a serene Bach piece on the piano.

It is an economical but intricately well-crafted story
of a personal journey both unique and universal. (Laure
Badufle is credited as cowriter; like many in the cast
this is her only credit.) What is missing is just as
bracing; no "looks like me" skin-color fundamentalism,
no rush to embrace another group identity. In fact
Freddie's journey is the opposite -- gradual shedding
of both her Frenchness, and the Korean neediness all around
her, to become her own person over the course of 7 years.
The look of _Return to Seoul_ has been compared with
Wong Kar-Wai's early films. I wouldn't go that far,
but I have not seen a film so filled with simmering rage
about parental abandonment (metaphor for being political
orphans in Wong's case) since _Days of Being Wild_,
_Ashes of Time_, and _Happy Together_. This is Park's
only film credit, and her coldness reminds me of Lea
Seydoux -- never more than in the scene where, drunk,
she tells her sensitive boyfriend-of-the-moment she
can ditch him with a snap of her fingers. And does,
one assumes. Tena, her faithful friend and translator
during her first trip, is also long-forgotten by then.
Tena tells Freddie she is a "sad" person. I think she
really means "angry," which comes with the territory.
Freddie likely will never form lasting companionship,
but her growth is bracing to behold all the same.
We may not "look like her" (and her looks change all
the time anyway) but certainly feel with her.

[septimus_...@q.com]

I meant South Korea, of course.

It is so nice that so much of French cinema does not buy
in to the American "woke" culture. Freddie has no doubt
been discriminated against in Paris, both as a French-Korean
and woman, but the film thankfully leaves that for lesser
directors.

Those who subscribes to new US progressive norms are even
scrubbing good old Agatha Christie's books for offensive
words now. The battle-cry is that the cultural content of
yester-years need to conform to today's standards. (The
National Gallery in Washington DC has all but criminalized
Renoir's paintings for the same reason.)

The corollary of this logic has seldom been raised, though.
Unless the woke crowd has the hubris to imagine we are at
the end of history, future generations will likewise pass
judgements on those "today's standards."

And their judgement will be very harsh, indeed. It took
activists so much time and effort to eradicate the racist
"colored" from polite usage, and wokeism brought it back
with a vengence. (A British soccer executives was fired
as little as 2 years ago for using the term "colored
athletes." He raised the excuse that the U.S. media used
the term. Deserved to be fired just for stupidity?) It
took so long to make mainstream the idea that skin colors
and looks do not matter, Wokeism has reversed that in
a flash too.

There is such condescension in the progressive agenda;
examples abound in cinema. Mati Diop's middling _Atlantique_
uses voodooism as a major motif, and so -- I'm sure some
critics meant well -- suddenly all African films have
to have voodoo stuff in the mix. They have to exhibit
anti-Western essence, and superstitution and primitive
reasoning are made to fit the bill. Kikyatu Jusu took this
concession-to-the-grader approach, and her _Nanny_ is an
unwatchable, programmatic mess. Intentionally or not,
Alice Diop's _Saint Omer_ rebukes such infantilizing
condescension. Evoking voodooism in the suspect's
legal defense is an object of ridicule in that film.
The difference, of course, is that Diop is top-notch,
confident of her philosophical underpinning; unlike
the mediocre conformists she doesn't feel the need to
adhere to US progressive ideology. The same may be
said of Davy Chou and his _Return to Seoul_.