Sokcho in Winter Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: 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 in utero, trapped between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. Initially matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of creative fuel, he manages to prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, increasingly scattered Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
