Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps 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. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
