Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from 7 November.
