Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.