Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from November 7.
