Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – 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 can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
