Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding 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 prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems 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, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from November 7.
