Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town

Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing 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: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters 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 move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – 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 liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.

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 Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

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