Winter in Sokcho Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by the book by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s first feature also camps in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. However this comfy routine is overturned when the outsider takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her needs on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Zem, progressively unmoored Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
