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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from November 7.