Frédérique, known as Freddie, was once adopted by a French family. Of her native South Korea, she has no memory. On a whim, the twenty-something decides to go there for a short stay. At first resistant to the idea of finding her biological parents, here she agrees to meet her father, a man, she discovers, broken. From unexpected encounters to big and small upheavals, the days turn into months. Unveiled in Cannes, Return to Seoul earned filmmaker Davy Chou many accolades.
“Freddie is strongly inspired by one of my close friends, Laure, with whom I studied. When we met, she never spoke to me about Korea, and I never spoke to her about Cambodia,” confides the filmmaker, who arrived in France as a kid with his parents.
“One day, at 25, she suddenly went to Korea, met her biological father twice and her biological mother once. Then she returned to France swearing that she would never set foot in Korea again. »
Several years later, Davy Chou had to present his documentary golden sleep, a project from the origins carried out over a period of a year and a half in Cambodia, at the Busan Festival, in South Korea. And the friend Laure, against all odds, to tell him that she would accompany him.
“She is as unpredictable and impulsive as Freddie. But she told me this: “We won’t see my father, because I hate him.” However, after three days there celebrating and watching films, she told me that we were going to visit her father the next day. »
There followed, just like in the film, a journey by bus to a “slightly post-industrial depressed” coastal town, according to Davy Chou, where the biological father and grandmother were waiting for them.
“I had anticipated a tearful reunion, but I was rather witnessing something very dry, very silent; emotions that are too strong, too contradictory… My friend’s anger and tension, and in front of her, this grief. It was the impossibility of communicating, it was the language barrier, the cultural barrier… There were two people there with a lot to say to each other, but who were completely unable to speak to each other. »
This episode marked Davy Chou deeply. Shortly after, he told his friend of his desire to make a film of it. She agreed immediately.
The rare pearl
Getting her friend’s permission up front wasn’t an easy process, though. There was necessarily a certain embarrassment, a certain modesty, from which the filmmaker had to free himself.
“There were all these doubts, coupled with a desire for accuracy. Am I going to be faithful to my friend? Am I going to live up, not to his expectations, but to his existence? Because he is a person whom I admire enormously, who captivates and inspires me, with all his roughness, his harsh and brutal dimension, his spirit of provocation, his infinite generosity, his ability to break down doors… his courage not to care about not pleasing…”
That being said, finding the actress to play such a character, a character sticking so closely to her model, must have been very difficult. Davy Chou nods with the relieved air of someone who knows that luck has finally smiled on him.
“It’s a role that required an ability to access emotional extremes, an ability to move from one extreme to another, sometimes in the same scene, even in the same shot. »
After searching and searching in France for actresses of Korean descent, the filmmaker was about to broaden his search to other countries when a friend told him about Park Ji-min, a visual artist.
“He is also an adopted Korean and an artist, and she was a friend of his. He saw many similarities between her and the character of Freddie, which I had described to him. Park Ji-min is not adopted: she was born in Korea and arrived in France at the age of nine. She’s not an actress either. She does painting, sculpture, installation…”
Intrigued, Davy Chou invited Park Ji-min over for coffee. The meeting lasted three hours. “In turn, I recognized many contradictory aspects of Freddie’s personality: this anger, this destructive side, this solar side, this generosity… When I did a camera test with her, she turned out to be incredible . I think it stems from her work as an artist: Park is very honest with herself, and she taps into her intense emotions, which she then puts into her works. So she had, in a natural way, this affinity with these emotional extremes that I was looking for. »
A loving gaze
From all these friendships and all these coincidences was born a singular and fascinating film in the image, at least it is presumed, of the young woman who inspired it. Besides, what did the main interested party think of it?
“Laure attended the premiere in Cannes. I felt her very feverish, anxious. The welcome was extraordinary, and she told me she was delighted with the result. Subsequently, however, conflicting feelings came to light within her, and she admitted to me that she felt a little like I had stolen her life. I won’t lie to you by telling you that she loved the film and that everything was wonderful. Except that she saw the film again, this time in the company of other people who had been adopted, coming from all over the world. And all these people were moved and claimed to recognize themselves in Freddie’s journey and reactions. It reconciled her with the film. »
A ending that is all the happier since, throughout, Davy Chou looks not only empathetically, but affectionately at his heroine.
“It’s funny that you mention that, because it’s a question that haunts me. How do you feel the love of the gaze of the person filming on the person filmed? Because, technically, a close-up is a close-up. Is it chemical? Does it go through the angle of the camera? Does it come from the performer, who feels that he or she is loved? It remains mysterious to me, but nothing upsets me more, in the cinema, than to feel a loving gaze on a beloved actor. »
The film Return to Seoul hits theaters March 3. François Lévesque conducted this interview in Paris at the invitation of Rendez-vous UniFrance.