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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing 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: Director 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 in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

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