Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily 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 relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes 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 boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
