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Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, 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 Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.