🔗 Share this article

Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, 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.