Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale 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 film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, 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 prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from 7 November.
