Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps 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 francophone hostess is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story 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 another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.
