Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town

Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over 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 November 7.