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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.