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

Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Everyday Existence and Disruption

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search 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 surrogate parent, or something else.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from November 7.