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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France 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 French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered 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 cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

The film is available on the streaming service from 7 November.