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

Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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