Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
