Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise 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.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
