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

Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story 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 something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

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