“Winter in Sokcho”, a woman between two banks

Winter in Sokcho **

de Koya Kamura

French film, 1h45

The film is adapted from a book, that of Élisa Shua Dusapin, but in its purity conceals the beauty of a graphic novel. Perhaps because his hero, Yann Kerrand, is a comic strip artist who came to find inspiration in this small Korean seaside town. Or more surely because the cozy winter atmosphere in which the characters evolve is not broken up, in the manner of manga, only by pretty animated parts intended to express the violence of inner feelings.

In this case, they are those of Soo-ha, a young woman between two banks. Singular because of her height, which gives her the air of a tomboy, she returned to her hometown after her studies and is looking for her path. In the meantime, she works in a guesthouse and divides her time between her mother, a fish merchant at the port, and a boyfriend whom she is not sure she really loves.

An uncomfortable in-between

In this uncomfortable in-between, the arrival of a Frenchman whose language she is the only one to speak will disrupt her daily life. Could this silent and solitary man, who locks himself for hours in his uncomfortable little room, be this father she never knew? An ambiguous relationship then develops between them in which the young woman projects her questions about her identity.

The almost ghostly but very real presence of Roschdy Zem gives life to this delicate film shot by a director who is himself Franco-Japanese. Her character is both the trigger for Soo-ha’s torments but also the foreign element which shakes up the blanket of silence imposed by her mother on her father and pierces the discomfort that the young mixed-race woman has always felt. Constructed in the manner of a clear line, in a succession of scenes of great simplicity, the film seduces with its formal beauty and its captivating rhythm which gives its place to the setting and the feelings. And thanks to a convincing Korean casting, it plays on a cultural in-between which gives it all its Asian flavor.