Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town

Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, 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 fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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