Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying 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 Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
