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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, 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 something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – 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 clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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