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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the story 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 subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.