Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
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 partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
