Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town

Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting 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 – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.