Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
