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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs 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 mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile 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 wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.