Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story 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 buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
