Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
