Winter in Sokcho Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city 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 father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from 7 November.
