Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director 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 two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays 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 deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
