🔗 Share this article

Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya 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 in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked 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. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.