Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the account 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.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on Mubi from November 7.