🔗 Share this article

Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise 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 something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, 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, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.