Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.
