Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent 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 Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed 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 in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
