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Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract 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.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.