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Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes 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 erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy 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 wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.