Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
