It’s winter in Sokcho, a small Korean town frozen by snow and an icy wind. Here, everything seems to be dormant, even young Soo-Ha, who divides her time between the pension where she works, visits to her fish merchant mother, and a relationship with a young man which is slowly fading away. The arrival of a French designer, Yan Kerrand, disrupts his life full of uncertainties, his questions of parentage and identity. He, silent, absorbed by his art and as if in another world; she, stunned by a romantic spirit, fascinated by the mysteries of this new man from elsewhere, who makes an unrequited desire grow in her.
Sokcho, a character in his own right
Koya Kamura, with this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Élisa Shua Dusapin, signs an atmospheric work, frozen by the Korean winter. Sokcho and its landscapes are a character in their own right: the deserted seaside resort reflects the unsaid and hesitations of young Soo-Ha and Yan – impeccable Bella Kim and Roschdy Zem.
One-way attraction
The relationships of these two characters are played out in a touched sensuality, looks, suspended gestures. Between these two melancholic souls, a disturbance, rapture and grace. Ambiguity is the key word. Observation and feeling are essential, but in reality, all the senses are awake. Cuisine, omnipresent, is a language in itself: Soo-Ha prepares dishes with a precision that borders on desire. She wants Kerrand to taste it, to enter her world, but he remains at a distance, absorbed by his drawings, by a quest that seems to distance him from everything, including her.
Animation interludes, signed Agnès Patron, add a dreamlike dimension. They draw on the screen Soo-Ha’s diffuse emotions, her inner impulses, her doubts. A line that is drawn, a drop that falls, fragments of his subconscious emerge. Between the cold outside and the silent desires, Winter in Sokcho is delicately suspended, recounting the ephemerality of an encounter and the peaceful beauty of a moment frozen in time.
Winter in Sokcho by Koya Kamura. In theaters from this Wednesday, January 8. Duration: 1 hour 45 minutes.
