Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Border City

Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.

Daily Life and Disruption

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on 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 flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.