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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.