There is a scene in Return to Seoul in which the main character, Freddie, is in a night club. The camera stays mostly attached to Freddie’s performance and during this scene it struck me that the most interesting thing going on was the softness of the image.

There is another pair of moments: One in which Freddie listens to their biological Father’s autodidact piano composition, and another, at the end, where Freddie plays a piece on the piano themself. Not unlike the club scene, these moments jump out at me because of a particular effect or quality that is being added after the fact. When Freddie plays the piano, I don’t listen to the melody so much as the softness of the notes themselves.

It may have been director Davy Chou’s intention to create a film of these moments and interventions. However, if so, it seems to me the narrative felt arbitrary next to them. I would wager that those flares of something special were not the director’s priority but instead were secondary to the story, and unfortunately for/to me, the story had little to say.

There are some films where I feel I can move or have some flex in my critical perspective, so I can become the intended audience, or at least adjacent to them. In other films I think it is clear I am not the audience and in which case I don’t think a critique beyond ‘I am not the audience’ is of much use to anyone. I am not sure who Return to Seoul is intended for but in this case I’m going to pass on judging it further, and assume I am not them.