Interview: Bella Kim and poetry of identity

Rarely does an actor encounter a role that mirrors their own life experience with uncanny precision, especially for a debut performance. For Bella Kim, who plays the lead role in the French-Korean film "Winter in Sokcho" that recently made its Korean premiere at the Jeonju International Film Festival, the boundary between character and self proved remarkably thin.

When Kim arrives at a cafe in Jeonju, having navigated through a sudden downpour, she carries herself with the effortless poise you'd expect from a Paris runway model -- which she is. For the past eight years, Kim has built a successful modeling career in France, with no prior acting experience before this role.

Her casting wasn't a mere happenstance, but the result of a meticulous search by the film's director.

"The production team was specifically looking for someone who could speak both Korean and French fluently," Kim explains. Though she speaks with an easy warmth, there's a contemplative depth to her words that suggests years of careful self-reflection.

"Since the character needed to be tall -- the director didn't want the typical power dynamic where an Asian woman appears physically smaller than her Western male counterpart -- they contacted several models working in Paris." After three months and multiple auditions, Kim secured the role that would become her acting debut.

Based on Elisa Shua Dusapin's award-winning novel, "Winter in Sokcho" follows Soo-ha, a biracial woman working at a guesthouse in the seaside town of Sokcho on the east coast. Her routine existence is disrupted when a French graphic novelist, Yan Kerrand (played by Roschdy Zem), arrives at the establishment seeking artistic inspiration.

What drew Kim to the project wasn't the character's complexity but something far more immediate -- its setting. "When I first heard about the project called 'Winter in Sokcho,' I was totally caught off guard," she says. "I actually lived in Sokcho for about five years as a child. My dad still lives there."

The coincidence soon revealed deeper connections. Kim discovered that beneath the geographical familiarity lay profound parallels between herself and Soo-ha. Both women navigate the complexities of existing between worlds, though their journeys have taken different paths. While Soo-ha is half-French and has never left Korea, Kim felt like an outsider in her home country long before relocating to France.

"I actually struggled more with my identity while living in Korea," she reflects. "I was always tall with a deeper voice and darker skin. I kept wondering why I was so different from everyone else. Even finding shoes was impossible -- women's shoe sizes only went up to 250 millimeters when I lived here."

That sense of displacement was compounded by the weight of academic expectations. "In school, teachers would constantly map out this ideal path: attend an elite university, secure a prestigious job, follow this prescribed life," she says. "Everyone around me seemed to fit perfectly into that narrative, but I couldn't envision myself in it. The future they described felt alien to me."

Her second chapter in Paris offered an unexpected sense of belonging. "I found that Paris actually accepted me more fully as a woman, physically and personally. It's such a cosmopolitan place with many people who share similar experiences."

The film maps another terrain of inner conflict through Soo-ha's fraught relationship with her body -- a narrative thread that unspools alongside her identity struggles with equal complexity. The character hides her body beneath oversized clothes and flinches at her mother and boyfriend's casual, but dogged, suggestions about having cosmetic procedures. These everyday negotiations with judgment accumulate, creating a portrait of alienation not just from belonging, but from the physical self.

That dimension of the story struck profound chords with Kim, whose professional life has been defined by external evaluations of her physical form. "I've definitely had my own struggles with body image," she says. "In modeling, some brands want one type of body, others prefer something different. I've spent years wondering what I truly want for myself."

Her personal experience informed one of the film’s most challenging scenes, where Soo-ha, after being emotionally rejected by Yan, binges on food from the guesthouse kitchen before purging it all out. "When I read the script, I told the director I could do this better than anyone. Shooting that scene gave me an important realization: My vulnerabilities could become my strength."

For a newcomer to acting, Kim faced an exceptionally nuanced role. The film presents particular challenges in its restraint -- it communicates through silences and gestures rather than exposition, save for a handful of emotionally charged moments. At its center lies an ambiguous relationship between Soo-ha and the older French artist that defies easy categorization.

When asked about the nature of this relationship -- whether it represents romantic attraction, a search for a missing father figure, or perhaps something more abstract like a yearning for a wider world -- Kim offers a refreshingly straightforward interpretation. "It's a love story. All relationships are fundamentally about love. The intensity of emotions -- curiosity, anger, sadness -- that Soo-ha feels toward Yan can only exist because of love in some form."

The production itself presented unique challenges as well. "The screenplay was written in French and then translated into Korean," Kim explains. "Since neither the director nor the co-writer speaks Korean, the actors became the ones who caught linguistic nuances that didn't translate well."

She describes negotiating cultural expressions during filming: "There was a line where the character was supposed to say 'That French guy is rude' in Korean, but I explained that in Korean culture, it would sound strange for someone to call an older person 'rude' -- it would be more natural to say they're 'inconsiderate.' The director insisted on keeping 'rude,' so we had these fascinating conversations about cultural differences."

The film's denouement arrives with quiet force. In the final sequence, Soo-ha appears transformed in new clothing, standing confidently at the shoreline. The film's recurring hand-drawn animation -- which punctuates emotional turning points throughout -- shows a woman in full stride, finally in motion after stasis.

"The final scene was special -- we didn't discuss much about how to shoot it. The director just said, 'Stand there and look at the sea.' When I got into position, for the first time, I felt like Soo-ha and I had completely merged. I didn't need to act."

That moment crystallized what Kim had learned throughout the filmmaking process. "I had been giving Soo-ha all the love I wished someone would give me. At some point, I realized Soo-ha is me, and I am Soo-ha.

"Through her, I learned how to love myself."