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Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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