Is this some kind of a PR-campaign of the Korean adoption board? Because there's no way this administration is so humane and effective. All the Korean characters are also exemplary, like a blank canvas on which to exhibit a textbooky image of adoption trauma. Freddie's friends are loyal, her lovers love her, even her drunken father is an angel engulfed by guilt. What am I saying, even his new wife is happy to welcome another woman's daughter in her home and life. This is a big fallacy in our therapied society: that everyone except you is perfectly fine, has no struggles and flaws of their own and is just waiting for you to join them in some candied reality. Only the abandoning mother remains cold as to fuel the plot. Freddie herself does all the things you would expect from a broken person, like, literally all of them. Otherwise, of course, she's angry and revengeful, self-destructive. I like that part, it rings true and there are some really powerful moments like the one with the ballerinas or where she's secretly moved by a birthday wish from her half sisters.
Review of Return to Seoul
