Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. 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 inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
