🔗 Share this article

Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.