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Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides 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 uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

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