Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite 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. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
