Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent 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 subterranean feelings surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.
