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

Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search 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.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.