Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. 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 search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, 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 imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
