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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s missing father 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 buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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