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Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared 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 comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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