Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract 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 another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered 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 innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
