Winter in Sokcho Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the story 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 another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
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 Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.
