Sokcho in Winter Review: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Based on the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details 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. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – 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 doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
