Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent 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 subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from November 7.
