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Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile 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 guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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