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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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