Winter in Sokcho Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Adapted from a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
