🔗 Share this article

Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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