Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing 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 primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.
