Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) 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, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence 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 aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in 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.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
