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It is the first feature from Paris-born filmmaker Jessica Palud, a former assistant director who has worked on several features from one of France’s greatest humanist filmmakers, Philippe Lioret . Lioret actually produced the film and also co-wrote the script with Palud and mono-monikered screenwriter Diasteme . For as long as I can remember, I've been watching movies, but my introduction to Asian cinema was old rental VHS copies of Bruce Lee films and some Shaw Bros. martial arts extravaganzas. But my interest in the cinema of the region really deepened when I was at university and got access to a massive range of VHS and DVDs of classic Japanese and Chinese titles in the library, and there has been no turning back since. Drawn Back Home is one of the best gay themed films that I have seen in a very long time. I have watched this movie at least a dozen times.
But Park Sun-joo’s film is not interested in that. Instead, she focuses on the human story and on the relationships that are strengthened or broken by the ghosts of the past that come catching back on you, while letting the actual event feel like a subplot or a mere plot device to the more important story. The emotions and their corresponding actions that Jeong-won goes through are very raw and feel authentic.
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It all seemed very operatic to me - I almost thought the story could be adapted to an opera. The central character, Fausto, even looked like an Italian tenor. The plot evolves from his selling his soul to the devil (i.e. some local crooks) to save his estate from bankruptcy.
Thomas meets Mona, his brother's widow and their son Alex. Mona is trying to manage the farm, with the alternative of losing the land to debt never out of sight. She struggles to provide security and education for Alex, and makes ends barely meet with a job in a nearby town. Generally speaking, Palud has a good eye for the coarseness of country folk and life. Victor Seguin’s unadorned cinematography, which seems to use only available light while saturating the colors, is the perfect choice for the muggy, near-oppressive countryside summer during which the story is set.
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But alas, this is a quiet, pastoral, contemporary French drama, so none of that is likely. A destitute farm family beset by misfortunate and grief is visited by their eldest son Thomas, who escaped the family's entropic field, to Montreal, many years prior. Thomas, a young man, returns from Montréal to the farm in the southeast of France where he grew up. His mother is terminally ill and his father is staying with her in the hospital and seems unable to cope with day-to-day chores. Thomas' first impression of the farm is discouraging; livestock have been sold to cover debts, irrigation pipes are in disrepair, and rooms are cluttered and in need of tidying up.
The appropriately stripped-down look fits perfectly with who these characters are, which is why the few instances in which music is used feel somewhat out of place as they pull the film in a more melodramatic direction. While a lot of the complex Michel-Thomas relationship has long and semi-obscure ties to the past, Thomas’ connection with Mona takes place entirely in the present. As she explains, in another bit of blunt dialogue, she finds it hard to be gentle with Alex, who, like most children can be patience-testing at times.
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Her quiet life, however, is thrown into turmoil one day when she receives a phone call from the police saying that the man who allegedly raped her ten years ago has finally been caught, an incident which she has so far hidden from Sang-u. Jeong-won struggles to decide whether and how to tell him after all these years, while her adoptive parents, Sang-u’s employees, who are aware of what happened, try to convince her to not keep her husband in the dark for too long. Victims of sexual assaults may report the crime against them to the police, but often the perpetrators walk away unscathed, never caught. The victims try to push forward with life as best as they can, never really forgetting what happened to them but trying to lock up the incident in a remote part of their minds. But what happens if, years later when the victim has seemingly moved on, they find out that the perpetrator has been caught? This is the central idea behind Park Sun-joo’s debut film “Way Back Home” (not to be confused with the Jeon Do-yeon starring 2013 film of the same name), which premiered at Busan International Film Festival.
Stay up-to-date on all the latest Rotten Tomatoes news! Tap "Sign me up" below to receive our weekly newsletter with updates on movies, TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes podcast and more. Jeong-won lives an unassumed life, juggling her work as a swimming instructor at the youth centre and preparing for an impending house move with her doting carpenter husband Sang-u. The two are trying to have a baby, with no success so far.
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Thomas renews old acquaintances and friendships and from conversations we learn stories about the family during his absence. Things don't fall into place neatly; the reasons for Thomas' estrangement from his family are never clear, although there are tantalizing hints involving his father and late brother. The ending is open and all choices are difficult. The title “Way Back Home” does seem confusing for a while but ends up being befitting as the movie reaches its closure.
These sentiments began to make further sense once Jeong-won’s younger sister features more prominently in the film’s second half. Jun Suk-ho is an actor mostly seen in much smaller, throwaway roles (most audiences might know him as the magistrate with the hots for Bae Doona’s character in Netflix’s “Kingdom”), so the gravitas he brings to Sang-u catches you off-guard and is praise-worthy. His transition from the loveable, doting husband to the confused yet supportive partner who wants to be his emotionally struggling wife’s pillar of strength but never quite gets to be is noteworthy, particularly in the aforementioned car scene. Seasoned supporting actors Yoo Jae-myung and Yum Hye-ran provide decent company to the two as Jeong-won’s uncle and aunt but it is Jung Da-eun’s understated performance as Jeong-won’s sister that surprises. Given the premise, this could easily go full-on forbidden love story. It could also turn easily into a turgid exhibition of inner-family quarreling.
Acorn doesn't have season two yet, but I'll be watching it if it comes. An agricultural estate owner in northern Italy awakens from a five-year coma to discover the life he knew turned upside down, and to learn that he is suspected of a murder of which he has no memory.
He’s not quite Charlize-Theron-in-Monster-level unrecognizable, but Schneider’s full-bodied performance really does manage to take center stage here because his appearance has been taken out of the equation. He also has a laid-back kind of chemistry with Exarchopoulos as his sister-in-law, even if a late scene with the duo underneath some olive trees feels like an unexpected swerve into genre complacency that’s somewhat icky in hindsight. But these changes to the fabric of rural France aren’t the only explanation for either the frosty relationship between father and son or for Michel’s misguided political leanings. Conversely, if one were being highly critical the only minor issue that the movie faces is with the character of the husband.
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