Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
