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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, 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 lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.