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Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.