Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town

Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes prepared 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 Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen 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 physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

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 doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.