Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space 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 compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting 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 emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
