Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City

Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.