Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film centers on hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she lingers uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Acting and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
The film is available on the streaming service from November 7.