Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
