Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (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. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella 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 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 internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
