Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story 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 something else.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
