Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of the city of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in extract the account 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 something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Acting and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, threatening to drown in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on the streaming service from 7 November.