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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, 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 creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.