Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices 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 succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, 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 restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella 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 tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
