Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit 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 another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
