🔗 Share this article Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Border City Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction. Everyday Existence and Disruption If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else. Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence. Performances and Cinematic Craft The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale. Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.