Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on the streaming service from 7 November.
