Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's first feature also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a move to the capital. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and release. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires 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 evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite 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. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
