Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City

Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers 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 (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.