The adoption of Korean babies was international big business for decades. According to the American magazine The Progressive, the South Korean government raked in around eighteen million dollars annually via Korean baby adoptions abroad. That ended in 2020 (after a public outcry) but the legacy is still very much with us. Cambodian-French director Davy Chou's intermittently captivating Return to Seoul takes a fascinating look at the cultural disconnects that result when one such adoptee returns to her homeland somewhat impulsively. Admittedly, Frédérique "Freddie" Benoît (Park Ji-min) is neither your typical French expatriate nor your typical Korean ingenue. She's callous and curious, impetuous and petulant, unreliable and ambitious; a lost soul who can't decide whether she wants to find herself or self-obliterate.
In her quest to do one of the other, she bonds with a hotel clerk (Han Guka), reunites with her alcoholic birth-father (Oh Kwang-rok), has an affair with an older arms dealer (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) and causes mischief basically everywhere she goes. Chou creates a sympathetic portrait of Freddie initially — enhanced by some terrific acting by Kim Sun-young as a strugglingly bilingual aunt — but eventually this story goes off the rails. A long-awaited reunion with Freddie's birth-mother leads her to hike in Romania? I'm not saying such things don't happen but when our lead character sits at the piano keyboard to bang out a tune we come to realize that her fingerwork, like this narrative, slips a little too often to be called harmonious.
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