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Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to 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 it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.