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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director 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, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled 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 seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – 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 cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

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