🔗 Share this article

Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ 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 in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise 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 another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.