I have been in Bombay for over 5 years now and it started out as a love-hate relationship with the city. I can’t claim to love the city now but I’ve definitely become friends with it. There are some things that I truly miss and I wish could grace this city, though. One being a pleasant winter season. December and January are much cooler in Bombay than the rest of the year, but I’d like a jacket-weather sprinkled here and there for a few months. So then what do we do if we can’t have that? We get all the possible feels of winter by having hot chocolate on a warm December night. We can watch films, maybe?

I hadn’t planned to, but I happened to whip up an elaborate brunch this Sunday. Chicken Frankies, Poha, Banana and Rawa pancakes, some fruits and a large appetite. We definitely needed a good movie to watch with this spread. The weather outside was perfect. The afternoon sun was mellow, the clouds were grey and the weather was much cooler. We pulled out a shawl from our “Bombay Winter collection” and cuddled up for food and a film.

Winter in Sokcho had caught my attention when I was searching for films on Mubi one day. It may sound dumb, but I thought, this movie may have some winter vibe that I’m scouring for.

The film is based in the eastern most city of Sokcho in South Korea. A city so perfectly located that it has the humidity of a coastal city, the cool winds of a mountain village and through it all, runs a bustling market of fresh sea food.

The protagonist is a 25 year old French – Korean who works as a receptionist at a shanty little guesthouse. A French novelist / artist checks into the guesthouse on a cold winter day and there begins this strange acquaintance of the two.

The protagonist’s mother also lives in Sokcho. She is a fish seller and highly skilled at that for her expertise in cleaning the fugu (puffer fish). Through the mother’s story, one really gets to live the sea food world of Sokcho. The cinematography is beautiful and you’d almost smell the fish at your home.

The mother has a heartbreaking past that is connected with the protagonist. The protagonist is aware of this but only to the extent of what was told to her. The truth from the past unfolds and the protagonist is forced to face realities that she wasn’t aware of while growing up, when her friendship with the novelist deepens. In a weird way, she gets obsessive about the novelist – spying on him, going through his sketches, trying to make French meals for him. The attraction isn’t sexual on the face of it, but it’s intimate and can make one feel uneasy. The relationship they share soon reaches its abrupt conclusion, which conclusion is also quite real.

The last scene shows a much more confident side of the protagonist than what she was before. She is comfortable in her own skin, she seems to have moved on. Something shifts, within her. It’s probably the filmmaker’s way of letting us know that some relationships are best left behind for one to be able to meet a better version of oneself.

It’s a visually stunning film and deeply emotive. The melancholic, wintery city of Sokcho only adds to the overall setting. While I write this review, the fan in my house turns off, I feel a cool breeze from the window touch my skin, and I ask my husband if the time is right to make some hot chocolate

-Aishwarya Bedekar