Winter in Sokcho Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burning Story of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Adapted from the book by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Symbolism abounds: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land 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 forced to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
If not enjoying spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her partner (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her internal world, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an fascinating kind of modern ghost story.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from 7 November.
