🔗 Share this article

Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.