🔗 Share this article

Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, 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 advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.