Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City

Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) 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 no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.

Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders 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 key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.