Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. 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 restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
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 solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
