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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama 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: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. 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 control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered 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 guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.