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Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa 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 debut film also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from 7 November.