🔗 Share this article

Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding 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 hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.