Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, 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 internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
