Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town

Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent 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 buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes 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 partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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