Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between dual heritages. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to 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 succeeds in extract the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
