Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents 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 despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide 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 in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
