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

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, 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.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.