Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
