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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua 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 Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract 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 proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.