Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on 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 subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious 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 – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
