🔗 Share this article

Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north 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 in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from November 7.