Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north 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 French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in 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 it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
