Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: 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, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father 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.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
