Winter in Sokcho review – A slow atmosphere about family and intimacy in a South Korean border city | film

AThis elusive but lively drama, adapted from the novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Chua Dusapin, sees guesthouse worker Soha (Bella Kim) push French writer Yan (Rochdie Zim) into the demilitarized zone north of the South Korean city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Camorra’s debut film also camps in No Man’s Land of the Soul, with Soha, abandoned by her French father while still in the womb, caught between two cultures. Forced to accompany the mysterious author, the French-speaking hostess is forced to linger uncomfortably between strained friendship and Oedipal attraction.

When she’s not digging into the amazing-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyun), Soha is hanging out with her boyfriend (Jung Do-yeo), an aspiring model looking to move to Seoul. But this comfortable routine is upended when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially consistent with her prejudices about rude French men, it turns out, when Googled, to have been critically acclaimed by graphic novelist Yann Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he was able to appreciate the story of Soha’s absent mother. She spies on him through an air vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father or something else.

Soha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical suffocation and release. We are only privy to her inner life; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his isolated morals and avoiding details of his past. His crypto state, where Sooha projects her needs onto him, is intentional—but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, as Soha’s mother and boyfriend perform plastic surgery on her – is clearly a major theme for Camorra. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a little too close to the main story, like the mysterious, bandaged dinner that’s also in the house.

The three centrally focused performances—an almost hostile Zim, an increasingly sparse Kim, and the self-involved Park—give Winter in Sokcho its solid center, and if Camorra can’t scale the wary encounter between innkeeper and guest objectively, he’s always on his toes speaking emotionally, often indulging in a concrete visual register. By focusing on absence, and the threat of drowning in internal sensations, Camorra mobilizes an interesting kind of modern ghost story.