Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner 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 inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – 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 bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects 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 parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, 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 absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
