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Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract 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 something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance 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 evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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