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Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff 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 succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.