Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Tale of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Frontier Town
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded 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 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 buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the primary narrative, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
