🔗 Share this article

Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.