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Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – 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 clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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