🔗 Share this article

Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north 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, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.