Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director 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. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the account 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 another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with details of his history. 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. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho is available on the streaming service from November 7.
