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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.