Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – 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 in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
