🔗 Share this article

Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always 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 intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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