Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface 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 solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, 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 seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
