Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on 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 buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly 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.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
