Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded 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 spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
