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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, 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 proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on 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 November 7.