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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to 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 surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

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