Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
If not enjoying visually stunning marine dishes prepared by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to 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 surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The trio of strong acts at the core – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on Mubi from November 7.
