Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, 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.
