Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness 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 clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
