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Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life 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 aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers 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 physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from November 7.