Aftersun, Return to Seoul

Paul Mescal

I'm late to the party on Charlotte Wells' Aftersun, but was relatively knocked out by it. The film is centered around an ill-fated vacation at a resort in Turkey taken by eleven year old Sophie and her troubled father. This sun-kissed holiday is set twenty years previously. We see glimpses of Sophie's life in the present day and how fragments of the trip have filtered into her memory. Wells' narrative travels back and forth in time. This obfuscates the events of the film, but prevents the tragic denouement from seeming overly morbid.

The acting has been justly praised, particularly Paul Mescal's Dad. His interactions with Sophie, played by the young Frankie Corio, are pleasurably natural and unaffected, as is Wells' portrait of the father's depression. What really stood out to me was Wells' spry use of different visual fields to convey the past as it is viewed Sophie's mind's eye. Aftersun is a film that reflects how the past is always present in memory. One of the more rewarding features of 2022. 

Conversely, I didn't like Davy Chou's Return to Seoul as much as many did, but Ji-Min Park's performance as the protagonist, Freddy, alone makes the film worth seeing. Park plays a twenty five year old Korean born woman whose parents gave her up for adoption to a French couple. Freddy's trip back to Korea seems spontaneous, but it is clear she has, at the very least, an unconscious desire to reunite with her parents. The film takes several leaps in time, though not back and forth like Aftersun, until Freddy finds closure. Freddy is imperious and untrustworthy, but it is a tribute to Ms. Park and Mr. Chou that they have collaborated on creating a fully fleshed out character, warts and all. 

However, the edges of Return to Seoul are not as interesting as its protagonist. Freddy's biological father proves to be a one dimensional caricature, as are a number of the supporting characters and Korea itself, as shown in the film, exudes little of its flavor. Return to Seoul is recommended, though, primarily because of Ms. Park.

Ji-Min Park