Winter in Sokcho, Love’s Daughter, Bernie… Films to watch this week

Winter in Sokcho – To have

The Drama of the Young Man – 1 h 45

Lemon sole, cuttlefish, octopus or fugu, deadly if not prepared properly, fish is everywhere in Sokcho, a coastal city in the far northeast of South Korea, no far from the border. On the market stalls, where Soo-ha’s mother works. In the plates, prepared in particular in the kitchens of the modest hotel where Soo-ha is the only employee. Formerly, her mother loved a Frenchman passing through Sokcho. He is Soo-ha’s father but he never knew it, returning to France before the pregnancy. At least that’s the official version. Soo-ha sought to get closer to this unknown father by studying French. And the arrival of a Frenchman gives him the opportunity to speak this foreign and familiar language at the same time.

Beautiful face, six-day beard, warm voice, tall figure. He plans to stay for a few days or a few weeks. She gives him a tiny, monastic room in the annex to the pension. A hole in the partition allows him to observe this solitary traveler with ink-stained fingers. Google tells him that he is a renowned artist, somewhat in crisis of inspiration. Soo-ha abandons her boyfriend, obsessed with the idea of ​​leaving the grayness of Sokcho to join Seoul and pursue a career as a model. She serves as Kerrand’s guide in the demilitarized zone which separates the two Koreas, takes him to dinner in a restaurant, shows him how to hold his chopsticks. She could be his daughter. Or his girlfriend. Kerrand, too rude, too hasty, too absorbed in his work, refuses to taste Soo-ha’s dishes. Even the beef bourguignon that she cooks for him cools on her landing.

Koya Kamura films the fragile bond between these two beings with impressive maturity. The animated sequences of Agnès Patron, dreamlike escapes or interior visions, represent most of the women gironde, fleshy buttocks and opulent breasts, without us knowing if they are monstrous or fantastic. AND. S.

Also read
Our review of the film Winter in Sokcho, by Koya Kamura: miraculous fishing

The Daughter of Great Love – To have

Dramatic comedy by Agnès De Sacy – 1 h 34

The year is 1991. Cécile, the daughter of Yves and Ana, has just turned 25. A student at Fémis, she must submit a graduation film on the theme: “Filming your parents. » Divorced for fifteen years, his father and mother always reassured him « that she was the daughter of a great love ». Family legends die hard.

Conscientious, Cécile asks her mother and father, who married in the 1970s, to remember their first meeting. At first, Ana is reluctant, having started a new life by becoming an antiques dealer in a charming house on the French-Spanish border at the foot of the Pyrenees. « He was very tall. The raincoat was white. He had light eyes », she said. Yves turns out to be more enthusiastic. A prominent Parisian notary, caught up in his daily life, he smiles at the mention of this original love at first sight: « We looked at each other. And bang, something happened. » During a small reception following the screening of their daughter’s short film, Yves and Ana see each other furtively again. Ana, fleeing, avoids the reunion. Troubled, frightened, she quickly leaves to take refuge in her property in the Pyrenees. François Damiens also felt the same thing. The fire of this past love continues to smolder under the embers. François Damiens takes the first step again. The former lovers meet again in Ana’s house.

At first we think it’s a remarriage comedy, but it’s not. When they meet again, these two are quick to argue. The couple moves slowly between conflicts and reconciliations. The couple will dare to reform despite and despite the secret drama nestled in their heart. They will thus see their love reborn in another form.

A singular romance built on a painful family secret, The Daughter of great love imposes itself gently, but with an obvious cinematic grip. This radiant and nuanced film underlines at every moment the complexity of human relationships and the difficulty for a couple to find inner peace. O. D.

Also read
Our review of The Daughter of a True Love, A Troubled Marriage

Bernie – To have

Comedy by Richard Linklater – 1 h 36

Intriguing. Berniefilmed in 2010, was never released in French cinemas. It is inspired by the true story of Bernie Tiede, recruited as an embalmer in Carthage, a small town in Texas, in the 1990s. Jack Black, fine mustache and impeccable brushing, plays this good-natured undertaker, fervent Christian, singer outstanding, soon adored by the entire community. Even Marjorie Nugent, a hateful and odious rich widow. Bernie becomes his confidant, his traveling companion, his wealth manager, his factotum, then his scapegoat. Nugent’s hold on Bernie is limitless. And leads the brave Bernie, perhaps not so brave, to commit the irreparable.

We won’t say more, except that Richard Linklater intersperses the story with testimonies from those close and not so close to Bernie. Neighbor in her rocking chair, local radio host, farmer leaning against his tractor, each gives their point of view, often contradictory, on the relationship between the embalmer and the capricious old bitch. The defense lawyer and the prosecutor. continue to clash outside the courtrooms over the Bernie Tiede case.
Under its black comedy air, Bernie is also a love letter to Texas, Linklater’s native land. A grating letter, but a loving one nonetheless. AND. S.

Also read
Our review of Bernie, by Richard Linklater: The Widow and the Embalmer

The Room Next Door – To avoid

Comedy by Pedro Almodovar – 1 h 47

At Almodovar, we agonize over getting dressed to the nines. It’s so chic. Martha and Ingrid hadn’t seen each other for a long time. They worked in the same magazine. One was a war correspondent; the other became a fashionable writer, a sort of Susan Sontag without a white streak. Suffering from cancer, Martha asks Ingrid to be by her side when she decides to take the fatal pill she bought on the dark web. She rented a house in the countryside. When the door to her room is closed, it will mean that she has accomplished the ultimate gesture. The two intellectuals go to the area around Woodstock. The villa is modern, sanitized. Has anyone ever lived in it? Damn, the sufferer forgot the famous pill in her Manhattan apartment. Ah, it’s not easy to say goodbye. She’ll still have to change her outfit.

Tilda Swinton dons a yellow suit and goes without lipstick. Against a backdrop of sad violins, Julianne Moore plays concerned tunes, supposed to reflect the conscience issue that torments her. In a accusatory tone, John Turturro is concerned about the rise of the far right and global warming. To recover from the meeting with this poseur, Ingrid goes to her gym class. Alas, there will be nothing between her and the coach, a mirror cabinet of insolent health who speaks much more down to earth. In the evening, the two women watch television, glued together on a designer sofa. No question of coming across a good old blockbuster. Even in the home stretch, we don’t eat that kind of bread.
The Room Next Door seems the work of a filmmaker under bromide, a film starched, cold, vaguely pretentious, impersonal like an architect’s interior. AND. N.

Also read
Our review of The Room Next Door, by Pedro Almodovar: a filmmaker under bromide