Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, 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 vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.
