🔗 Share this article

Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed 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 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 musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.