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

Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in 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.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.