🔗 Share this article

Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.