Winter in Sokcho Review: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Frontier Town
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is forced to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
