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Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to 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 proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.