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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching 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 search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story 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 another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.