Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned 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 comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search 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.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
