We Thought You Were One of Us: Movies About Finding Your Origin
There’s a continuing conversation in the modern age about what it means to come from somewhere or to be part of a specific group, be it gender, race, nationality, sexuality… the list goes on and on. Humans have a funny relationship with labels, and we are often quick to dismiss ones applied to us from external forces. Besides, being part of a group we have chosen can be more satisfying than trying to force blood relatives to not kill each other.
In each of these films, a character is trying to reckon with where they come from or uncover something about themselves, however messy that might get. For some, there will never be an answer good enough. For others, the answers are beyond their imagination.
Return to Seoul / All the People I Will Never Be (2022) is a character study centered around Freddie (Ji-Min Park), a young woman born in Korea and adopted by a French family who makes the trip to Seoul to find her birth parents. She befriends Tena (Guka Han), a clerk at a local hotel, and brings her along on her trek as her interpreter since she doesn’t speak the language or know the customs. They travel together to where her birth father’s family lives, and while Freddie is welcomed with open arms, it’s an uncomfortable and overly emotional experience for everyone involved.
Through several time jumps, Freddie ages and changes, outwardly embracing each version of herself but showing obvious signs of being conflicted and unsure. To the viewer, it appears that Freddie enjoys her identity more when it’s different than the one she’s immersed in, but also never feels fully comfortable in her own skin. She is someone who grew up disconnected from the culture that born her and who may not be striving to fit in anywhere. The ending of the movie shows us Freddie in her thirties still traveling and exploring with much of her motivations left unexplained. She seems more put-off by people trying to claim her as one of them, as is seen in the moments with her biological father’s family, than she is by the idea of being different – yet she still acts like something’s not fitting quite right.
As confident as she is conflicted, Freddie is nothing if not an active participant in her life. She makes swift decisions and sees them through to the end. In one unusual moment of doubt, Freddie yells at a bus driver to stop and turn around before they get to her father’s town but since she is speaking French, the outburst gets ignored. It’s a humanizing and unsettling flash of how much must be raging inside of this young woman despite how directly she deals with the world.
On a similar yet wildly different note, Nr. 10 (2021) is a Dutch movie by Alex van Warmerdam about a man Gunter (Tom Dewispelaere) who was found in the woods as a baby and gets pulled into the mystery surrounding his birth by a strange man he meets on a bridge. What is already an unusual story gets weirder as his daughter Lizzy (Frieda Barnhard) mentions her recent visit to the doctor and the fact that she apparently only has one lung. Not one functioning lung; one lung period. Coupled with the strange man who confronted him on the bridge and the fact that Gunter feels like he’s being watched, a paranoia takes over the film.
Gunter is approached by a group of men who promise to explain everything to him if he will come along with them. Naturally this seems suspect since everyone in this movie is sneaking around, lying to each other, or nailing their co-worker’s feet to a stage floor. Still, like the character in The Vanishing, Gunter is willing to risk his safety for answers and he goes into the woods with the men where they show him a spaceship hidden under the earth and tell him he is not human but an alien strategically left behind. But once they show him a clip of his mother playing with him as a baby, he becomes convinced enough to try and drag Lizzy back to his supposed home planet with them.
Nr. 10 can be a frustrating watch, with a lot of layers that are too involved to delve into here. There’s a whole anti-religion subplot and a running theme of competitiveness in the professional arts world. If I knew more about van Warmerdam, I’d make some guesses about how these threads tie into his experience. For many, the pay-off of this movie might not be enough and the human drama that drives the first half of it can be too dry, especially compared to the idea of aliens rounding the corner. But there’s a lot that makes this film watchable and intriguing. Gunter is not like Freddie, someone who has never quite fit in and isn’t sure if she wants to. On the contrary, Gunter has been doing fine for most of his life and is blindsided by the truth of his birth. His decision to go with the strange men has more to do with how he’s blown up his personal and professional life than how out of place he’s felt on earth.
Now stay with me. We’re going somewhere quite different.
I Like Bats (1986) is a Polish horror romcom that goes in a bunch of weird but never outlandish directions. That might sound funny to say about a movie where people are genetically vampires but even in its surreal moments I Like Bats is about coming to terms with oneself and accepting who and what you are.
Izabella (Katarzyna Walter) is a beautiful young woman working in her aunt’s shop by day and occasionally hunting humans at night. There is no vagueness about whether or not Izabella is a vampire; pretty early on we see her in action. That being said, she isn’t affected by light or any of the other vampire tropes aside from not seeing her own reflection. When a handsome psychiatrist Rudolph Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz) stops into her aunt’s shop, Izabella thinks she may have found someone who can help her figure out why she is the way she is.
Jung admits Izabella to his institution (one of the most beautifully gothic buildings ever put to film) and continues to tell her that this notion of being a vampire is merely a delusion. Izabella pushes for a more physical relationship with Jung but he denies her advances. He brings her to a specialist who runs an asylum by the ocean where the patients are kept in chainlink cages right by the water. Jung is told that Izabella will be kept her until she dies but he commits to breaking her out, which encourages Izabella to try again to have her way with him.
So much of this movie toes the line of absurdity but in a way that is very intentional. Izabella, though confused about how she came to be what she is, remains in control of herself and her decisions. She might have questions about her origins but she never doubts the claims she makes. Her aunt hints at the fact that they are born this way and there’s not much they can do aside from getting their teeth fixed. This is far and away the most playful of the movies covered here but has a quietly subversive feel to it that comes from female characters being shown with agency alongside their animalistic drives.
As origin and identities remain a focal point in national discourse, we can expect more films like these. All the questions posed in the movies covered in this piece are small and personal, but apply to larger issues at the core. Wondering where you come from or how you wound up where you are isn’t necessarily discourse for a larger stage, but with each individual perspective, a wider picture emerges and we see just how much overlap can be found in wildly different paths.
