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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.