Winter in Sokcho Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a South Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, left behind by her French father while she was still in utero, caught between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and Oedipal attraction.
Daily Life and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning marine dishes cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a move to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. At first matching her biases about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in search of creative fuel, he succeeds in prise the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She observes him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a remote presence, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from reaching its full potential. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the primary narrative, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the core – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on Mubi from November 7.
