Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
