Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) 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 soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
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