Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful 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 biases 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 prise the story 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.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
