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Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story 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.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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