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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the story 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 something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.