Summer 2024: Return to Seoul and Mixed Heritage Experiences
A look at the next Lazy Girls Film Club screening, Davy Chou's Return to Seoul
Welcome to this summer edition of the Lazy Girls seasonal newsletter! This time we’ll be taking a closer look at the next film in our 2024 programme, the stylish drama Return to Seoul (2022), screening at the Electric Palace Cinema Hastings on Saturday 10 August.
There is no single experience common to all people of mixed cultural or ethnic heritage. I was born to a white British mother and an Anglo-Indian father of South Asian and European descent, who grew up in India before coming to the UK with his family as a teen.
For most of my life I have struggled to know how or if my family heritage informs my identity. Partly because my family’s cultural and ethnic history is complicated (and often misunderstood) I am excited by filmmaking that acknowledges the complexity and changeability of mixed heritage identities.
Return to Seoul is a beautiful modern exploration of mixed identity and cultural alienation by Cambodian-French director Davy Chou. Visual artist Ji-Min Park stuns in her first film performance as Freddie, a young woman who impulsively returns to her birth country of South Korea, having been raised in France by adoptive parents. There, she is perceived as Korean, though she is culturally French. She is detached from her heritage, a tourist in a place that she is presumed to belong, struggling with language and customs.
Over the course of the film, Freddie’s identity proves to be fluid. She is enigmatic and adaptable, making bold changes to her life in a way that often feels provocatively amoral. She is both supremely confident and vulnerable, her true feelings and motives often inscrutable, but always compelling.
I can’t wait to bring Return to Seoul to the Electric Palace this summer, and I hope you’ll join Lazy Girls Film Club in celebrating this wonderful film. Tickets can be booked at the Electric Palace website.
Eleanor x
Lazy Girls Film Club Founder and Programmer
Lazy Girls Recommends
An Interview with Davy Chou
This in-depth interview with Return to Seoul director Davy Chou was conducted by Elissa Suh for Mubi Notebook. In it, Chou and Suh dissect the film and its many suprising influences.
T A P E Collective Presents: But Where Are You Really From?
A collection of films free to watch on the BFI player, this selection is part of a significant project curated by T A P E, who do incredible work spotlighting women of colour in front of and behind the camera. Each of the films in the collection explores mixed heritage identity from a different perspective, highlighting the diversity of mixed experiences and making it ideal complementary viewing to Return to Seoul.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
This memoir by Michelle Zauner (best known for her music as Japanese Breakfast) is a moving account of growing up as a mixed-race woman in America. It is also a tribute to Zauner’s Korean mother, who she lost to cancer, and an exploration of how that loss prompted her to reflect upon and reclaim her own identity. A film adaptation is reportedly in the works, with Will Sharpe set to direct.
Lazy Girls Listening
There’s a new Spirit of the Beehive album on the way (following the recent release of the i’m so lucky EP) making it the perfect time to revisit their 2021 album ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH. This noisy, constantly unpredictable album balances weird soundscapes and off-kilter vocals with melodic interludes to create a dynamic, unsettling, totally immersive listening experience.
Summer Watchlist
This Summer Feeling (2015)
A little-known, bittersweet drama starring the always wonderful Anders Danielsen Lie (also featuring wildy unexpected appearances from Josh Safdie and Mac DeMarco).
Early Summer (1951)
Ozu’s beautiful film stars regular collaborator Setsuko Hara as young woman under familial pressure to marry, offering a characteristically complex look at changing attitudes in post-war Japan and intergenerational tensions.
La piscine (1969)
Gorgeous, tense, outrageously sexy. If that wasn’t enough, it’s got Alain Delon and Romy Schneider circa 1960s. Pair it with Luca Guadagnino’s loose 2015 remake A Bigger Splash for a good time.
Pauline at the Beach (1983)
There are so many great Éric Rohmer films set during the summer, but this one provides a brilliant showcase for Amanda Langle, who would go on to have a supporting role in Rohmer’s semi-autobiographical A Summer’s Tale (1996).
Summer with Monika (1953)
If you’re sick of summer and want to feel the kind of claustrophobic existential misery that only Bergman can inflict, this might just be the film for you.
In other news…
Cinema For All Community Cinema Conference 2024
Lazy Girls Film Club recently attended the Cinema For All Community Cinema Conference. It was a fantastic chance to meet creative film programmers running community cinemas across the country. Lazy Girls was in the running for Best New Community Cinema at the awards ceremony, and while we didn’t walk away with the top prize, we did receive a Commendation in the category, which is reason to celebrate!
11am Saturday Film Questionnaire
I recently took part in the 11am Saturday film questionnaire, which was so much fun. It’s an ongoing project that aims to uncover the watching habits of those who ‘spend an above-average portion of their days in movie theaters’ - coincidentally, their latest post features Elissa Suh, who interviewed Davy Chou for Mubi! You can subscribe to the substack here.
my interview with Davy!! thank you for sharing. what a lovely film world coincidence <3
Adding 'Return to Seoul' to my watchlist immediately. And thanks for the shoutout! Such a pleasure to have you on