Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) 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 liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
If not enjoying visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
