🔗 Share this article Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction. Everyday Existence and Disruption When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else. Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs 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 boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence. Performances and Cinematic Craft The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale. The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.