Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: 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 in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
