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At the beginning of Davy Chou’s “Return to Soul,” Freddie (Park Ji-min), a 25-year-old Korean woman, arrives in her titular birthplace for the first time since she was born. Back in 1988 — the film opens in 2013 — a white French couple adopted her from an orphanage in the South Korean city and raised her. One might infer that Freddie’s reappearance in her home country might be coming with the much-thought-over gravity indivisible from returning to one’s roots. But it’s actually closer to an accident. Freddie booked a two-week vacation in Tokyo, but, owing to a typhoon, had to reroute to Seoul as a next-best option at the 11th hour.

But after some encouragement from Tena (Guka Han), the front-desk clerk at Freddie’s hotel, the journey winds up becoming exactly the kind of returning-to-one’s-roots trip the free-spirited, often rash Freddie initially might have balked at. Soon she’s contacting the orphanage she’d been adopted from, hoping her lack of documentation and other key identifiers won’t be a problem; soon she’s having dinner with her biological dad (Oh Kwang-rok), his wife, and their kids, who all are so hungry for derailed-by-circumstance closeness that it isn’t long before Freddie’s father is seriously inviting his daughter to come live with them in Korea permanently. 

Read the full column, on Return to Seoul and John Wick 4, on 425.