Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City

Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.

Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. 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 deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.

Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.