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Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.