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Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, 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 subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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