Winter in Sokcho Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in extract the story 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.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
