Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in 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 Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved 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 in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
