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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north 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 loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes 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 bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest 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-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.