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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted 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 acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers 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 bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.