Sokcho in Winter Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burning Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. Once 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 seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about impolite Frenchmen, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of secret, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, upholding his loner ethic and stingy with details of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a tactile visual register. Fixating on emptiness, on the verge of succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
