Freddie (Park Ji-min) was given up for adoption as an infant and is now back in Seoul, speaking no Korean but a lot of French and some English. In her first scene, she checks into a hotel, but she doesn’t seem very certain about it. Serendipitously, receptionist Tena (real-life literary translator Guka Han) speaks French. She becomes Freddie’s main contact and interpreter.
That Tena and her friend Dongwan (Son Seung-Beom) speak French is unusual enough for the film to offer an explanation (her mother’s a French teacher, he majored in Franco–Asian comparative literature). But it had to be done, for writer-director Davy Chou is Cambodian French, and Return to Seoul (2022), inspired by the experience of Chou’s friend Laure Badufle, is the Oscars 2023 submission of . . . Cambodia, for some reason.
