Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer 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 soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
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 doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on Mubi from November 7.
