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Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers 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 (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation 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 needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.