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Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully 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. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.