🔗 Share this article

Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding 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 one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.