Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
