🔗 Share this article

Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters 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 lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic 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 residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from 7 November.