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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from November 7.