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Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood 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 familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring 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 Mubi from 7 November.