Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya 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, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
