Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings erupt in bursts of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – 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 vocation, it seems a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from November 7.
