Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. 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 vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from 7 November.
